- Committee increasingly concerned as
SEW disputes DWI account
The EFRA Committee has today published letters from South East
Water's Chair, Chris Train, after he was invited to respond to
damning evidence about the company provided by the Drinking Water
Inspectorate last week.
Mr Train's letter disputes much of the evidence provided by the
Inspectorate and says it has commissioned a further review to be
undertaken by one of the company's non-executive directors,
Caroline Sheridan. The company says this review will be complete
in April.
The Committee plans to invite the leadership of South East Water
and the Inspectorate to a further evidence session in the near
future.
Attached to this email are two correspondence from South East
Wate Chair Chris Train. One is a response to the Committee's
letter to him last week, the other contains the company's initial
assessment of the causes of the Pembury treatment works outage on
29 November.
EFRA Committee Chair MP has said:
“Members of the press and public would be forgiven for seeing Mr
Train's announcement of a further review of the Pembury failure
as an attempt to buy themselves time, to hunker down until this
storm blows over. They also assert that their review will be
‘independent'. It stretches the meaning of ‘independent' when
their review is to be conducted by a member of its board,
supporting by its staff. What was the investigation done by the
Drinking Water Inspectorate if it was not an independent
review?
“My colleagues and I remain deeply sceptical about the company's
version of events to date, and its Board's track record of
holding the company to account. We would be failing in our duty
if we now allowed them without challenge to mark their own
homework, let alone on a timescale that will add months to the
process.
“We will seek a further evidence session with both the Drinking
Water Inspectorate and the company's Chief Executive and Chair.
Ahead of that we shall gather further evidence and allow the
current outage affecting customers in areas of Kent and Sussex to
pass. I would expect the forthcoming session to include of the
non-executive directors as we now see issues of corporate
governance affecting the delivery of the company's services.”
ENDS
Note to editors
The correspondence, ‘SEW Chair initial response to Pembury outage
19 December' is watermarked as “confidential”. The Committee
requested a non-watermarked version but it was not provided by
South East Water in time. The Committee does not regard the
contents of this document to be confidential as is therefore
publishing with the watermark.
