Southern Water CEO warns of 'small risk' of outages as works continue

Speaking to the Echo in an exclusive interview, Lawrence Gosden said December's outage - that saw 58,000 homes without water - was  “completely unacceptable”.

But the Southern Water boss, who has been in post since July 2022, warned that there is a “small but elevated risk” of more issues as the Testwood water supply plant is rebuilt, alongside the Otterbourne plant.

The 56-year-old CEO said Southern Water is working with local authorities to set up semi-permanent and permanent bottled water stations in case of any outages.

This would mean that Southampton residents “would know exactly where to go to” in the event of another outage, after confusion in December's outage.

Properties in Southampton, Eastleigh, Romsey, and the New Forest were without water across two days in December, following a “technical issue” at the plant.

READ MORE: Southern Water reveal cause of major Hampshire water outage

The water company previously revealed the problem had occurred during ongoing works, and Mr Gosden warned of further risks for the next to three years as repairs continue.

“The simple truth is to why it happened is that we are rebuilding, as part of the turnaround of Southern Water, the Testwood Water Supply Plant and the Otterbourne water supply plant,” he said.

“As we rebuild it, there is a risk profile associated with that. We’re doing everything we can to reduce that.

“But as we go over the next two to three years until we've completed that work, there is a small but elevated risk of another outage.”

Mr Gosden said the UK has the highest water quality standards in the world and that the plant automatically turned off when it discovered an issue.

Long queues at a bottling station in December as people collect bottles of water at Places Leisure in Eastleigh. (Image: Stuart Martin) He said that systems shutting down was the “right thing to do to protect water quality”, but the process of repairing the issue can be slow due to aged infrastructure.

READ MORE: Southern Water respond to criticism over water outage - their answers in full

The CEO said: “I think it's important that we're just honest and straightforward with people that we’re doing the right work to rebuild these treatment works but it is going to take us a bit of time to do that.

“While we do that, there is an elevated risk. There’s a small, I wouldn’t want to exaggerate that, but there’s a small risk of that outage being elevated.”

During the outage Mr Gosden issued another apology and customers were offered double compensation in the weeks following.