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The boss of Southern Water has defended plans to hike customers’ bills by 85% in the face of recent troubles.<\/p>\n
Chief executive Lawrence Gosden was quizzed on the increase by MPs at the Environment Committee on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Under proposals revealed in December<\/a>, Southern Water – which serves Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Kent and East and West Sussex – plans to increase bills over the next five years by more than any other UK water company.<\/p>\n It comes after recent anger over a major water outage for customers<\/a> just before Christmas, a record \u00a390m fine in 2021 for dumping raw sewage into the sea<\/a> and a \u00a3183,600 bonus for Mr Gosden<\/a>.<\/p>\n He told the committee the bill increase “relates simply to geography”.<\/p>\n He said the south-east of England was designated as water-stressed and highlighted its large population.<\/p>\n This resulted in less rainfall per capita than Namibia, a country in southern Africa that is largely made up of desert, he said.<\/p>\n “That means that we have very large forward investment plans for water resources…,” Mr Gosden told the committee.<\/p>\n “There’s a very large water resources [requirement] to safeguard this part of the country from climate change and that is on top of a very significant environmental improvement and investment programme to redesign sewer systems.<\/p>\n “Effectively there is double the impact of investment in this part of the country because of the geography of the region.”<\/p>\n