Southern Water pledges £9.7m compensation after Hampshire outage

Southern Water is to give £9.7 million in compensation after 58,000 households in Hampshire went without supplies for nearly two days.

The issues began on Wednesday morning, when homes and businesses as well as hospitals in Southampton, Romsey, Eastleigh, Totton and parts of the New Forest experienced a loss of water or low pressure.

The fault at Testwood water supply works was fixed on Thursday but supplies were not fully returned to all households until Friday after the storage reservoirs had refilled.

The disruption came as households served by Southern Water discovered their bills would see the highest increase in the country.

Southern Water’s chief executive officer Lawrence Gosden has apologised and pledged the compensation for residents as well as to invest £250 million over the next seven years to upgrade the Testwood site.

In a statement, Mr Gosden said: “I want to apologise personally to the community in Hampshire following the water supply interruption this week, for the huge disruption and inconvenience it caused so many people so close to Christmas.

“The community served by the Testwood water works has suffered similar interruptions before, and so what happened this week is a repeat for many who live in the area. I understand how disruptive and infuriating this was for all those affected, and I’m very sorry.

“It was the single biggest water supply incident in our company’s history.”

Mr Gosden said the company had “failed” in its response to the incident by initially not providing enough water bottle stations and “poorly serving” those on the priority services register.

He added that the company would review the incident but could not rule out future problems because of the “ageing infrastructure” which needed to be modernised.

He said: “This badly-needed investment is now coming and is the main reason customer bills are going to rise significantly over the next five years.”