Issue - meetings

Southern Water are consulting on a Drainage and Wastewater Management Plan(DWMP) over the period 13 June to 5 September 2022. This DWMP document has been split into 5 papers, which cover the overall strategy and approach Southern Water intends to take over the next 25 years for the wastewater catchments they serve. Members are asked to consider and agree the proposed consultation response. [The proposed response will be circulated separately ahead of the meeting.]

[Councillor Lury was absent for the vote on this item.]

The Chair welcomed David Murphy, Senior Project Manager at Southern Water, to the meeting. Upon the invitation of the Chair, Mr Murphy gave a presentation to the Committee on Drainage and Wastewater Management Plans and Southern Water’s current public consultation (a copy of the presentation can be found on the meeting’s webpage). The Planning Policy Team Leader then presented the report which asked Members to consider and agree the proposed consultation response to Southern Water’s consultation on its Drainage and Wastewater Management Plan(DWMP). It was explained that the DWMP document had been split into 5 papers (Internal Sewer Flooding, Sewer Condition and Groundwater Pollution, Storm Overflows, Compliance and Pollution, and the Environment) which covered the overall strategy and approach Southern Water intended to take over the next 25 years for the wastewater catchments they served.

Members then took part in a full debate on the item where a number of points were raised including:

·       support for the management plan and the Officers’ response to the consultation

·       the need to very strongly support nature-based solutions

·       regret that the Local Plan update had been put on hold as it had climate change development management policies that would have enabled the Council to ask more of developers

·       the need for sustainable rainwater catchment solutions in an increasingly urban area in order to keep rainwater and wastewater drainages separate

·       concern that without the Local Plan update resumed, the District could see several more years of housing development without adjustment for this issue

·       Lidsey Treatment Works capacity and whether this would exceed the permit levels before 2025

·       Southern Water’s previous capital investment horizon having been 17 years, this having now increased to 25 years and both durations being long periods of time when compared with the rate of house building in the District

·       the issue of blockages to internal sewer flooding and, whilst still needing to educate customers to change habits, whether Southern Water was considering fitting interceptors at strategic points in the network to lessen the impact of these

·       following the Environment Agency’s recent report into Southern Water’s performance as ‘terrible across the board’ including a threefold increase in serious pollution incidents in the last year and ‘significant issues’ in the reporting of their water management plans to DEFRA, how anyone could have any confidence that any of Southern Water’s plans would happen

·       given Southern Water’s admission that water in Sussex was stressed, the extent to which water neutrality was considered at the housing development design stage but also what was being done about water neutrality now

·       the impact of any increase in permit levels by the Environment Agency and the resultant perceived increase in capacity on the Local Plan update, and in particular housing numbers and an increase in incidents of overflow

·       the need for some sort of enforcement to deal with blockages as the largest single reason for internal sewer flooding, either on manufacturers to use more suitable materials or  ...  view the full minutes text for item 192