East Sussex village to hear how Southern Water is reducing storm overflows

Residents in the Fairlight area of East Sussex can find out how Southern Water is working to reduce storm overflows.

Fairlight is one of Southern Water’s six pathfinder projects, which focus on reducing storm overflows through engineering and nature-based solutions.

As part of the ongoing work, a drop-in session will be held at Fairlight Village Hall, Broadway, Fairlight  (TN35 4DA) on Monday 18 December between 10am and 4pm

This will provide the local community, residents and stakeholders an opportunity to see and hear how work is progressing and what the next milestones are.

The drop-in session will focus on these areas of work in Fairlight:

• Slowing the flow of surface water from households and businesses
• Our programme to install water butts -progress to date and next steps.
• The progress of our surveys to understand the surface water flow in the catchment.
• Condition of the sewers and next steps
• Progress of our misconnection investigations 

This comes shortly after Southern Water announced its Clean Rivers and Seas Plan that sets out £1.5bn of investment between 2025 and 2035 to get to the root cause of storm overflows. This work is being led by our Clean Rivers and Seas Task Force.

Pathfinder Project Manager – East, Angus Cramp said:

“We know how passionate our communities are about the issue of storm overflows and reducing use of them is our number one priority. We’re keen to share all the work we’re doing in Fairlight to ensure this area can benefit from healthier rivers and seas.

“It is absolutely crucial that residents, other organisations like councils and businesses are behind what we’re doing and understand more about this, and where possible work with us on solutions over the coming months and years.”