Wealden residents' health concerns over Southern Water's failings in the treatment of waste-water within the District have been addressed with a Conservative-led motion at today's meeting of the full council.
Only members of the Green Party took umbrage and abstained/voted against the motion which was put forward by Conservative council leader, Ann Newton.
The motion is that the Council are concerned that the company is restricting itself to providing a minimal service to residents, whilst not acting to prevent sewer discharges occurring, which are entirely predictable during periods of high rainfall. Action to stop this practice is too slow and data is not being shared across the whole district to show the scale of the problem.
It goes to to say: "Whilst we recognise that we cannot refuse planning applications on this issue, as the legal duty is on Southern Water to deliver the necessary upgrades, we consider there needs to be greater local transparency and scrutiny over the delivery of these upgrades, to protect our environment and our communities.
The motion, which was passed by an overwhelming majority of councillors present, asked the Leader of the Council and Chief Executive take the following actions:
- To write to the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs;
- To state that WDC condemns the Government’s Storm Overflow Reduction Plan - which will still allow water disposal authorities (such as Southern Water) to continue to discharge sewage into our homes, gardens, rivers and seas for many years to come.
- To seek reforms that would require water disposal authorities to publish (live) all details of storm overflows, not just into bathing waters (as done by Southern Water), but every location into every watercourse.
- To write to the Secretary of State for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities;
- To ask that Government make water disposal authorities a statutory consultee on all planning applications, setting binding standards on the quality of responses.
- To seek the introduction of annual reporting requirements on the progress of water disposal authorities in relation to the infrastructure upgrades required to serve new growth.
"It was pleasing to see so much support for Cllr Newton's motion", said a spokesman for the Conservative group. "But most disappointing that the Green Party chose not to support it in an apparent fit of pique."
