Agenda item

Report by the Director of Communities, Economy and Transport.

26.1     The Team Manager, Emergency Planning introduced the report and outlined the background to the incident which occurred at the beginning of March 2018. There was a disruption of water supplies over 3-4 days during which time the Emergency Planning Team and Sussex Resilience Forum (SRF) were involved in the response to the incident. Learning from this incident has been captured by the multi-agency Operation Kirkwall de-brief held by SRF three months after incident. Since that time the Emergency Planning Team has been working with the Water Companies and the Resilience Forum on the lessons learnt to update and amend emergency plans.

South East Water

26.2     Douglas Whitfield, South East Water, gave a presentation to the Committee which outlined the water supply areas covered by South East Water; the background to the freeze thaw incident; the company’ response to it; and the follow up work that was been undertaken. The points raised in the presentation are summarised below.

26.3     South East Water supplies around 517 million litres of water per day to properties across Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The majority of the water comes from ground water sources (80%) with the remainder coming from surface water sources.

Freeze thaw incident

26.4     The Eastern Region which covers Sussex and Kent was affected by the freeze thaw incident during which temperatures went from -11^oc to +11^oc. The rapid change in temperature caused ground movement which led to a large number of burst pipes, particularly on customers’ premises. 70-80% of the burst pipes were on customers’ premises and around one third (20-30%) were on the water supply network. This led to a 20% increase in demand for water of around 105 million litres on the first day of the incident, which drained the water supply network. This was the worst loss of water supply incident that South East Water has experienced in the last 20 years, and it affected 8,000 properties in East Sussex.

26.5     South East Water responded to the incident through an emergency plan and in conjunction with the Resilience Forums. The emergency plan included setting up an incident team in advance of the weather event due to the forecast impact on the water network of an increased number of leaks and burst pipes. However, South East Water did not anticipate an incident of this magnitude, which involved a large number of leaks on customer’s premises.

26.6     Teams of engineers repaired 633 leaks over the five day period and 28 burst mains a day; 675 vulnerable customers were contacted and provided with emergency water supplies; and emergency supplies were provided to affected farmers and businesses. South East Water also set up a communications sub group to provide communications through councils and other partners, but accepted that it needs to make more use of these links in future.

Emergency Water Supplies

26.7     Customer feedback showed the main concern was about the availability of emergency bottled water and the location of the distribution centres. It was clear this needed to be improved. Since the incident South East Water has worked closely with Local Authorities and the SRF on the provision of bottled water and has revised the location of distribution centres. Bottled water supply arrangements have been changed and South East Water now holds larger stocks of emergency bottled water. It has also invested in additional plant and equipment to provide emergency water supplies.

Communications

26.8     Communications were also a major concern, with residents complaining they could not get accurate or up to date information about the incident. In particular customers wanted to know which areas were affected, when supplies would be restored, and where and when emergency water supplies would be available. South East Water acknowledges that they were not proactive enough with communications. They will aim to improve information from the incident team on updates, and will make more use of social media as the speed of communications is much more important now.

Compensation

26.9     South East Water wrote to all affected customers within a week of the incident to offer compensation. They provided automatic compensation, above the minimum levels, determined by the length of time customers were without a water supply.

Follow up actions

26.10   South East Water do plan for cold weather and have a priority services register of vulnerable customers who they contact in the event of an interruption to the water supply. Following the incident, they have done a lot of stakeholder engagement to get feedback on what needed to be improved. South East Water have revised their emergency plans in the light of this feedback, and carried out an exercise to test the plans.

26.11   An Action Plan on how South East Water is going to improve resilience was also required by the regulator, Ofwat. To date around 40 out of the 61 actions listed in the Action Plan have been completed. The focus of South East Water’s work over the next 5 years is to improve resilience to weather events, climate change, and population growth. The Business Plan is available on their website and would welcome the Committee’s input on the Business Plan.

Southern Water

26.12   Joel Hufford, Southern Water, outlined the water supply areas covered by Southern Water. The freeze thaw incident mainly affected Southern Water customers in the Hastings water supply zone (postcode areas TN34 and TN35) and in particular the Fairlight area which had the worst water supply interruption. Across the whole Southern Water supply area (2.3 million people in Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight) 7,700 customers were out of supply for up to 4 hours during the freeze / thaw event, and 2,246 customers were out of supply for up to 3 days.

26.13   The severe weather impacts on the water supply were similar to those experienced by South East Water. There was a rise in bursts on the water supply network and customers premises, although this impacted fewer residents in East Sussex. Southern Water responded to the incident in a similar way by:

• Setting up emergency bottled water distribution points;
• Undertaking bottled water delivery to priority customers;
• Communicating information about the incident and Southern Water’s response;
• Working with the SRF and other partners on the incident; and
• Customers were offered automatic compensation based on the length time without a water supply.

26.14   Following the incident, Southern Water has focussed work on increasing resilience for severe weather and other events. They were also required to produce an Action Plan by Ofwat and have fully implemented around half of the actions, with the remainder in progress. Vulnerable customers have been encouraged to sign up to the company’s priority services customers register. Southern Water have held an internal review of the lessons learnt and worked with its Customer Challenge Group, the Consumer Council for Water and Local Resilience Forums to improve their response and emergency plans. They have also conducted research among customers who were affected to gain their insight and use this to make improvements. In future, incident communications will provide clarity on what has gone wrong, and why, when will it be fixed and what customers can do. A full list of actions has been published on the Southern Water web site.

26.15   Longer term, Southern Water is working on key areas under their Business Plan including the ‘Target 100’ project, which aims to get water usage down from 130 litres to 100 litres per person, per day. Another project ‘Network 2030’ aims to have a water supply network which is more intelligent. The aim is to have fewer customers out of supply if there is another incident, and Southern Water wants people to have confidence in their response in terms of alternative water supplies and when the supply will be restored.

26.16   The Committee highlight that it is particularly interested in the steps being taken to improve the response to future incidents, including the provision of alternative water supplies, communication with residents, and the support available for vulnerable residents. It observed that communications about the incident were very poor and there was no information on the South East Water web site about what had happened to cause the interruption to the water supply. There was little reliable information on when supplies would be restored and no accurate information on when alternative water supplies would be delivered to distribution centres.

26.17   Douglas Whitfield, South East Water, acknowledged that communications needed to be improved. In the first 48 hours of the incident South East Water was trying to establish what had caused the problems. From the customer point of view communications were not good and in future South East Water will use local organisations and groups to assist with communications. Jo Shippey added that they learnt very quickly throughout the incident and responded by setting up dedicated pages on the South East Water web site. It proved very difficult to give accurate timescales for restoring supplies, as engineers strove to understand the cause of the problems. South East Water accepted that communications needed to be improved and recognise early communication of information to customers is important to them.

26.18   The Team Manager, Emergency Planning commented that a major incident was not declared until Monday so there was a delay in the multi-agency response. This meant resilience groups were not involved early enough to assist the water companies.  The Team Manager, Emergency Planning confirmed that when a major incident is declared the Priority Service Register from other utility companies can be shared with the responding organisations. The SRF and partners are looking at how to share information more quickly and store it in standard format. Jo Shippey confirmed South East Water is working with SSE and other utility companies to share data. Both water companies confirmed work is ongoing on this issue, and there is an ongoing communications campaign to get people to sign up to the Register.

26.19   The Committee discussed the relationship between the water companies and the SRF, and asked if there had been sufficient engagement from South East Water with the resilience forum. The Director of Communities, Economy and Transport outlined that the water companies are covered by the Civil Contingencies Act. There is no incentive for them not to engage with other authorities as it is not in their interests to do so. The incident created a difficult set of circumstances for the water companies to deal with. The water companies have the primary responsibility to deal any water supply incident, and the multi-agency partnership role is to facilitate the water companies’ response.

26.20   The Committee commented that it was surprised that a major incident was not declared sooner. There is a need to engage with partners sooner as they could have provided assistance with the incident response more rapidly (e.g. in Wealden, the use of showers was offered to affected residents by Freedom Leisure, the leisure centre operator). The representatives from the water companies re-affirmed that there is a willingness to engage with customers and stakeholders in the resilience forum to deal with incidents and emergency planning.

26.21   The Committee also raised the issue of Water Supply and Drought Plans and whether they have taken into account of the amount of new housing and business space being built in the County. Joel Hufford responded that Southern Water has a 50 year water resources management plan, as does South East Water, which sets out the measures that will be taken to provide adequate supplies of water.

26.22   The Committee asked if the water companies were now better equipped to deal with providing emergency water supplies than previously. Douglas Whitfield confirmed that South East Water are better prepared and hold a much greater stock of bottled water. They are taking greater ownership of the response in first few hours and can bring in vehicles to deploy emergency water supplies. Jo Shippey added that they have also worked with partners to identify better locations for distributing supplies in the event of an incident.

26.23   The Committee asked if the water companies could have done more to anticipate the incident. Douglas Whitfield responded that the water companies were prepared and had emergency plans in place, but were surprised by the temperature swing and the number of burst pipes. It is thought that it is unlikely that these particular set of circumstance will happen again. However, actions are in place to address the failure to anticipate the scale of the impact of the weather event. Both water companies have plans to utilise smart technology for monitoring the water supply networks to anticipate leaks and manage demand.

26.24   The Chair thanked the water company representatives for attending the meeting to speak to the Committee about their concerns.

26.25   The Committee RESOLVED to note the report the report and the water companies’ response via their action plans.