The borough councillor for North Baddesley is calling on the government to revoke Southern Water’s licence following the water supply issues.

Cllr Geoff Cooper, who is also the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Speaker for Romsey and Southampton North, has criticised the firm following the latest failure which saw approximately 13,000 homes either with low water pressure or no water at all for four days last week.

Cllr Cooper said: “This latest failure from Southern Water, follows a similar incident before Christmas and comes after years dumping sewage into our rivers, a hosepipe ban last year, multiple flooding incidents and persistent issues with leaks.”

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“Southern Water have persistently polluted our rivers and failed to invest in the infrastructure needed to guarantee fresh water supply to residents.”

During the outage, water supply was lost to areas across Hampshire including Winchester, Eastleigh and Southampton. In scenes reminiscent of the supply loss in the run to Christmas, Southern Water’s response was to set up limited bottled water distribution sites, leaving residents queuing to collect essential drinking water. Many were unable to reach the distribution centres, instead relying on friends and family for water or simply going without.

Cllr Cooper added: “More of the £823 million of profits the company made in 2021 should have been invested in infrastructure and contingency planning.”

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“Southern Water has failed to meet the minimum standards required. It has failed to adequately explain the reasons behind the disruption to service this month and before Christmas. Southern Water has persistently and consistently failed residents. Therefore, I am calling on the government to revoke its license.”

The Liberal Democrats have also recently called for Ofwat, the water regulator, to be abolished and replaced with a tough new independent regulator with real powers to protect beaches and rivers from sewage dumping.

In the last two years across England and Wales, there have been almost a million sewage discharges, lasting more than seven million hours in total.