Hastings water supply latest: Hundreds sign petition calling on Southern Water to invest more in its pipelines

Resident Margaret Winchester started the petition on Change.Org earlier this week and it already has more than 1,000 signatures.

She said: “In light of the latest massive disruption in our water system, please sign this petition to force Southern Water to invest properly in our infrastructure.

“I believe Southern Water has consistently prioritised shareholder profits over the necessary investment in our decaying water infrastructure. This neglect has led to frequent service disruptions and inadequate support for those most in need.

I am a resident of St Leonards-On-Sea, UK, and like many others in my community, I have been let down by Southern Water. They advise vulnerable people to call their priority phone lines, but there is no answer. They advertise that they are delivering water to vulnerable people, but in many cases they are not.

The pumping of sewage off our beaches is horrifying and disgusting. The photo is of raw sewage around the beach huts The repeated flooding of our streets in heavy rainfall due to inadequate drainage causes major damage to homes and businesses.

There is a clear indication that their current approach is failing us - the customers who rely on them for an essential service. We must demand better from Southern Water. We urge them to withhold payments to shareholders until significant investments have been made into improving our local water infrastructure. Only then can we ensure reliable services for everyone - especially those most vulnerable among us.Please join me in calling on Southern Water to put their customers before profits by signing this petition today and sharing it to all your family and friends around the country.

You can find the petition here

A spokesperson for Southern Water said, this week: “Over the next few days, we will continue to concentrate our effort on ensuring all customers’ supplies are stabilised and keeping a close eye on the situation. We will then focus our attention on compensation. We have made the commitment to go beyond our regulatory and statutory obligations for businesses affected, on a goodwill basis, and will explore all options for residents.

"We're very sorry for the disruption this outage has caused and thank you for your patience and understanding throughout.”

Southern Water said it delivered 1 million litres of bottled water to vulnerable customers on the Priority Services Register over a four days period since the leak started last Thursday, making the incident one of the biggest for bottled water operations ever handled by the company. It says around 400 employees of the company were involved in managing the incident, as well as contractor partners.

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