00:00And your top story tonight. David Hinton, Chief Executive of South East Water, alongside a non-executive director of the
00:08company,
00:08were questioned once again by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee about the two-week drinking water outage
00:15in Tunbridge Wells late last year.
00:18And reporter Naila Mahamad joins us live from Tunbridge now to tell us more about the questioning.
00:25So, Naila, I can see you there now. What's today's question been all about?
00:31So, Meg, what happened today is a select committee of MPs questioned David Hinton and other non-executive directors of
00:38South East Water about the outages that happened last December.
00:41And it's been described by many who viewed it as an absolute grilling.
00:45And so, for context, a select committee scrutinises what the government does.
00:48And it's made up of MPs from various different parties who are not government ministers or party spokespeople.
00:54They decide what to investigate and take evidence from various witnesses to produce a report which they send back to
00:59the government.
01:00There was a questioning of David Hinton back in January by the same committee, who the Environment, Food and Rural
01:05Affairs Committee.
01:06And there has been a change of tone since then. Let's have a look at what was said.
01:09For the second time this year, David Hinton, the chief executive of South East Water, has been questioned by EFRA
01:17about the two-week water outage in Tombridge Wells late last year.
01:21Around 24,000 South East Water customers did not have access to safe drinking water after a plant failure and
01:29were told to boil tap water when it did return.
01:31In January this year, Hinton rated the response to the water outage an 8 out of 10 when questioned by
01:38EFRA, to which many residents said he should have done more.
01:42We're a bit backwards in coming forwards.
01:44I think, you know, the CEO should have got out there on TV and informed the town.
01:52He should invest quite a lot of money in their local infrastructure, in their local water supply, the mains, the
02:01reservoirs, so this doesn't happen again.
02:04They need to look at their, they need to get their systems engineers on it and assess what went wrong,
02:11do a modification to their system so it doesn't happen again.
02:16And today, after pressures from MPs and EFRA, David Hinton conceded.
02:22I did get that wrong. We have very much gotten it, it was something that I hadn't experienced at that
02:26level before.
02:29We're using consultants to really help us work out what our effective emergency playbook is, our crisis comms playbook is,
02:37what everyone's role in that playbook is.
02:39So that is a learning that we went through, went through the pain of getting it wrong.
02:43The chairman of South East Water, Chris Train, also admitted failure to their customers.
02:49You've told us already that it's part of your responsibility as a non-exec director to look to customer interests.
03:00Do you not think your customers deserve that degree of accountability from you?
03:05And that degree of accountability is that we, we accept that we failed in our primary duty.
03:15Water regulator Ofwat has proposed fining South East Water £22 million for the multiple water issues in Kent between 2020
03:24and 2023.
03:25Mr Hinton said that £600,000 has been put aside to compensate businesses that lost money during the water outages
03:32late last year.
03:33In a statement offered after his appearance today, David Hinton said,
03:37We apologise unreservedly to all our customers and recognise the serious impact this has had.
03:43In recognition of this, I've made the decision not to accept any bonus for the next year.
03:47We are taking direct action to change the way supply interruptions are managed.
03:51We are focused on delivering our long-term business plan while keeping customer bills affordable.
03:56Customers can be assured that we are working at pace to complete our full programme of works.
04:01Naila Mahamud for KMTV in Tunbridge Wells.
04:06And since the meeting this morning, MP Helen Whaley has described Mr Hinton's words as tone deaf,
04:12even saying the South East Water just don't get the impact that they've had and has even caught with his
04:16resignation,
04:17a desire that has been echoed by so many people since the outages in December.
04:20As I mentioned in the piece, Mr Hinton is planning a fund for £600,000 for any businesses financially impacted
04:27by the outages.
04:28But MP Mike Martin said that the local economy faced a loss of £18.6 million,
04:33called it a paltry sum, saying that it didn't touch the sides of the true financial damage that was inflicted.
04:40In a statement about the £600,000 funding, South East Water said,
04:45We understand how incredibly difficult and disruptive the water supply issues are,
04:49and businesses are expected to have the relevant instruments cover,
04:53and we are incredibly sorry for the impact that this has had.
04:57Thanks so much for that report there, Nayla.
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