MP criticises water boss for 'not facing' media

South West Water's boss didn't do interviews during parasite outbreak

Exmouth MP David Reed has criticised South West Water’s boss Susan Davy for failing to talk to the media during incidents such as Brixham’s cryptosporidium outbreak.

Mr Reed, who has focused heavily on the company’s performance since taking office in July, said it is “unacceptable” that Ms Davy didn’t address the media during incidents and that this responsibility was given to other staff.

“For me, I find it outrageous that Susan Davy doesn’t face the media and take accountability for her company’s mistakes,” Mr Reed wrote on Facebook.

“Instead, Susan lets politicians, community leader and other people do it for her.

“I have said repeatedly that this is unacceptable and Susan must be the accountable face of her company; if she can’t do this basic task then she must let someone more responsible take over.”

This week Ms Davy was asked about her engagement with the media  by Labour MP Helena Dollimore (Hastings & Rye) at the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee.

Ms Dollimore said she had heard that Ms Davy had refused to be interviewed by local media about the cryptosporidium outbreak in Brixham and Kingswear last year.

“Is it correct you have turned down media interviews at times of extreme panic among your customers,” Ms Dollimore asked.

Ms Davy said she wanted to support her colleagues and communities and ensure they were getting all the information they needed.

“I wanted to speak to my customers who were on the ground,” Ms Davy said.

“What I wanted to make sure that we did was get all our information out to our customers and make sure they were very clear what was happening.

“In that instance, I had my incident director and my customer services director, who was doing that twice a day to make sure that the information was [available].”

“So your team spoke to the media, but you as chief executive would not front that media in a time of severe crisis for your customers,” Ms Dollimore added.

Ms Davy said she spent her time “on the ground” in Brixham and Kingswear, and with the control room “making sure our teams were supported in doing what they were doing every day”.

Hundreds of people fell ill and several were hospitalised after a parasite called cryptosporidium got into water supplies at Kingswear. Thousands of homes across the village and nearby Brixham were told for months to boil their water before drinking it.

Tourism businesses were badly hit as reports of the outbreak spread.

Asked if she would pledge to speak to the media in future incidents, Ms Davy said: “The best reassurances I thought I could give customers at that point was to make sure they were getting all the information they needed from our incident director and the customer service team.”

Pushed for an answer, she added: “There are things that I regret around the Brixham incident and I should have, in retrospect, perhaps it would have helped if I had spoken to the media, but at the time I thought the right thing to do was to make sure everybody had the information that they needed.”

Mr Reed has previously met Ms Davy to discuss works in Exmouth following sewage spills that closed its beaches during the height of the summer season.

In October, Mr Reed said Ms Davy and Richard Price, the company’s managing director for waste water services, understood the “magnitude of anger felt by the local community” and were “willing to bring money forward” for repairs if they could get regulatory sign-off.

In December, the firm said it had completed a scheme to replace a section of sewer in Exmouth which would “protect customers and the environment from potential pollutions.

“The team have worked hard over the last eight weeks to replace over 300 metres of sewer entering Maer Lane Wastewater Treatment works to improve services for customers, businesses and visitors to the area following issues with the network over the last 12 months,” the statement said.

An update on Monday 24 February said that following completion of the first phase on the Maer Road rising main replacement “the system has been performing as expected”.

“We are currently carrying out enabling works as we plan to start construction of Phase 2 in the spring,” it added.