Sponsored content: A letter from Southern Water to customers affected by water outages in Thanet

A letter from Southern Water

Hello,

We’re very sorry for the issues you’ve experienced to your water supply over the last two months.

I fully appreciate the distress and disruption this has caused and want to reassure you that we’re doing everything we can to improve services in your area.

The loss of water in December was caused by a significant burst to our 15” water main. However, the problems in January were due to multiple power failures at our Rumfields site caused by a faulty power connector and subsequent issues with our back-up generators to keep the site running. Usually, our tower reservoir would keep customers in supply for some time, but unfortunately this was out of service for essential repair works at the time.

To improve our resilience and limit disruption to your water, we’ve already installed a new temporary back-up generator, with permanent connector and generator replacements arriving by mid-February. We’re investing in a new system so we can switch power to alternative supplies during power outages and we’ve increased the number of people on site, so it’s now staffed 24/7. Our new water tanker fleet is also being rolled out to improve our response in water loss incidents.

Photo Ciaran McCrickard / Southern Water

Our longer-term fix is getting our tower reservoir back into supply so we can keep your water flowing for longer should any issues arise on site. The first phase of the repair is complete, and it’s now being tested before the tower can be used. We’re expecting this to be finished by the end of February but if it’s unsuccessful we will let you know.

Finally, we’re also investing a total of £2 billion, which is around £1,000 per household, across our region between 2020–25 to improve our services to you, reduce pollutions, and fix leaks.

Regular email updates on our works will be sent to customers impacted by these disruptions. If you want to receive these emails but haven’t given us your email address, you can update your contact information via our secure form here or on your online account.

Photo Ciaran McCrickard / Southern Water –

Yours sincerely,

Katy Taylor

Chief Customer Officer

17 Comments

  1. A message from a smiley lady in a suit.
    How reassuring!🙄
    Too many graduates. Too many shareholders. Too many office staff.
    Look at the business model from 1960 and you might grasp what the real problems are.

    • The public pay the compensation to them for abysmal performance & fines incurred by unlawful dumping of sewage when there was need for them do so, other than their greed-as they admitted in court.

  2. It will be much the same except the pinstripes will be wider and the Tories would own your energy. At least I can see this.

  3. Well they have explained their case and what they will be doing. Sometimes crap happens and they are trying at least to fix it

  4. I dont want to be a customer of southern water, but i have no choice however, a monopoly company who puts profits and shareholders first and customers last

  5. No real contrition. Nobody’s arse kicked. Investing £200 per property each – big deal. Continues to pay obscene amounts of money to its big shareholders. Time to take it back into public ownership!

  6. “Sponsored content” they paid money from our water rates for this?!?!?

    What a load of management waffle.

    Employ less smiley PR people and more people with tools fixing.

    Pay less dividends to shareholders (and Craig McKinlay) and more money to fix issues.

    £1000 per house hold sounds a lot but it’s not a true figure and it’s just PR. They’ve grossly underfunded the infrastructure for years, taking money out. Now it’s too late to say we are spending “some” money on it

  7. Dear Peons,

    We steal from the poor & give to the rich(ourselves & the shareholders) & couldn’t really give a monkeys about your water supply, or dumping sewage into water-even when as we admitted under oath in court we didn’t need to, but just because we wanted to save a few quid to line our pockets even further.

    Anyway, any costs for fines, compensations etc-will be paid for by raising your bills for our sub-standard service even further on a regular basis-just like all the equally greedy, morally bankrupt & corrupt energy companies, other water companies & sacking our hard working & low paid staff at the bottom of the pile-to ensure you have a harder time getting any issues sorted out & the complaints drop as people give up after 40 minutes of a ringing phone not being answered.

    Oh yes & the Aussie investment bank we have flogged off a large part of the company to-so they can help foot the bill instead of us-they are the ones investing the money, not us.

    Toodle pips, my dear peasants.

  8. ‘Dear idiots

    Instead of drinking water drink champagne like we do you peasants!
    And you want compensation for not drinking anything other than water, you should be paying us more for the privilege of being your maters(oh believe me you will pay more now we have been fined!).
    Now, go away and stop snivelling you brats, I have a dinner at the Ritz to attend!

    Yours
    Southern Water’

  9. And straight on from the bo**ock speak letter to soften people up(pity they don’t soften their water) & make themselves look like wonderful human beings rather than greedy toads they are working for you, comes the price rise announcement for their appalling service.

    Wonder if they can talk about the Dane Park fountain again & hold some more meanings to try to fool people?

  10. You can choose your gas, electricity & telephone supplier but not water why?
    They know you can’t go anywhere else & that gives them the freedom to do what they like when they like.

  11. How can these criminals not face trual? Constantly dumping pathogen and drug laced raw sewage into out precious rivers and seaside. Destroying fisheries; business and habitats.

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