This in from Andrew Turner’s office, in their own words. Ed
The long running dispute between Southern Water and some villagers in Gatcombe and Chillerton will be raised in Parliament tonight.
The Island’s MP, Andrew Turner, has secured a 30 minute debate at 10pm in the House of Commons.
He will use the opportunity to raise the issues with Richard Benyon MP, the Minister responsible for water supply in the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Mr Turner won the right to hold the debate in a ballot open to all MPs.
Agreement ‘run its course’ say Southern Water
In 1907, a wealthy benefactor and philanthropist, Sir Charles Seely, effectively gave away land to Shanklin District Urban Council in return for either free or reduced rate water for residents who lived on the land for 999 years.
Now just over 100 years later, Southern Water, who have taken over the rights and liabilities of the agreement have unilaterally declared that the agreement has ‘run its course’.
Mr Turner said, “This is an example of a big company using its position to ride roughshod over ‘the little people’ when they know they cannot be challenged at an affordable price.
“The particular reason I am raising this with Ministers is because Southern Water are a monopoly supplier, regulated by OFWAT. An independent body called the Consumer Council for Water should represent the rights of consumers in disputes with water companies free of charge, but they have declined to get involved saying these are legal issues.”
Help from Minister sought
He went on to say, “The real issue is that Southern Water has simply declared that they are not bound by a legal agreement that appears to still be in force; but my constituents have received legal advice saying that it is. Southern Water is interpreting the law to say what they want it to say; they know the villagers won’t take them to court and that their regulator has refused to get involved.
“There should be some way of sorting this out which is not prohibitively expensive. I don’t know if the Minister can do anything to help in this case; I hope he can. But in any event I wanted to raise these issues to highlight the high-handed way Southern Water are acting towards Islanders.”
Image: Likeable Rodent under CC BY 2.0
