South West Water blasted over Brixham bug response

South West Water has come under fire again for the way it has responded to the cryptosporidium outbreak that hit South Devon earlier this year.

Thousands of homes in Kingswear and Brixham were told to boil their water before drinking it after the bug got into supplies from a small reservoir nearby. 

The disruption lasted for weeks, with South West Water (SWW) having to hand out tens of thousands of bottles of water to worried households. Dozens of people were made ill by the bug, and several were hospitalised.

The water company has been summoned to a ‘summit’ in the coming weeks to explain the outbreak and what is being done to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Cllr Ged Yardy (Lib Dem, Dartmouth and East Dart) told a full South Hams council meeting: “Their system for compensation is utterly disappointing.

“They are spending money on expensive lawyers to defend compensation cases when they should be just paying up.”

And Cllr Jacqi Hodgson (Green, Dartington and Staverton) said the £3.2 billion SWW says it has paid in dividends to shareholders since 1990 could have been better spent on improving the company’s infrastructure.

And, she went on: “All of these public services that we have privatised will spend more on lawyers than on the common decency of paying compensation for what has gone wrong.”