Hastings water shortage: Southern Water challenged over pipe declared 'outworn' 17 years ago

ITV News Meridian's Abigail Bracken challenges Southern Water's Head of Customer service Ashley Marshman over claims the company failed to repair an 'outworn' pipe in 2007

ITV News can reveal that underground piping which was declared 'outworn' 17 years ago was never replaced by Southern Water, after 30-thousand homes in East Sussex were left without supplies following a burst main.

Southern Water was granted permission to upgrade a 12km main between the Darwell Reservoir and Beauport Water Supply Works in 2007.

The company's application to Rother District Council said the works were needed to 'improve the security of drinking water supply to the Hastings area'.

Despite approval, the water firm did not carry out the replacement with the local council telling us that the company put the project 'on hold'.

Following the accusations that the organisation failed to maintain the pipeline properly, Southern Water's Head of Customer Service Ashley Marshman told ITV News: "We are aware of reports of this planning application. What I will say is our focus right now is to get the remaining customers back in supply.

"As part of our pre-incident investigation, we will be looking into this and we'll report back to our customers on what that was all about."

Properties and businesses in Hastings and St Leonards began experiencing problems with their water supply on Thursday 2nd May after a pipe, deep in woodland, ruptured.

Schools and colleges were forced to close and businesses resorted to gathering water from the sea just to flush toilets.

Hastings Town Centre Manager John Bownas said: "I was gobsmacked, absolutely gobsmacked.

"There's going to be huge questions asked now as to why, 15 years ago, a problem was identified and nothing was done about it."

Engineers have spent the last five days repairing the pipe and restarting supplies.

On Tuesday 2,000 or so households woke up to low or no water supply, with tankers being drafted in to support the network.

Since the problems started, more than one million bottles of water have been handed out to residents, the most its ever delivered during an outage.

Southern Water has apologised to customers and says it will compensate customers.

A spokesperson for the company said: "Once we are confident that all our customers have their water supply restored and stable, we will explore compensation options.

"We have already committed to going beyond our regulatory and statutory obligations in compensating the businesses affected, on a goodwill basis."

As of Wednesday 8 May, Southern Water said all of its customers in St Leonards-on-Sea and Hastings have had their water supply restored.

Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To Know…