SES Water’s response to COVID-19
The health of our customers and employees is our first priority, along with the ability to continue to provide a resilient supply of high-quality water. I want to reassure you that we responded quickly and put our contingency plans into action a number of weeks ago now, in line with the Government’s evolving advice. The main focus has been planning for potential staff shortages and taking pre-emptive measures, like enabling more remote working and reviewing non-essential activities. As you would expect, the impact on our customers has been minimal so far and we have been working hard to put in extra support measures too. The below summarises our current position:
• We have stopped all non-essential work on our pipe network such as renewing mains and instead, as key workers, we are only focusing on emergencies that affect customers’ supplies, like burst pipes
• We will only enter people’s homes to deal with emergencies like no supply, taking the necessary additional precautions, including wearing additional Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
• We are now only dealing with emergencies and those customers in vulnerable circumstances over the phone but have retained our 24/7 Control Room and will continue to do so
• To support our customers with additional ways to contact us we have implemented an online chat function on our website, as well as giving customers the option to sign up to ongoing email and SMS updates
• We have introduced a ‘payment holiday’ which means paying nothing for three months and after that the customer is automatically enrolled for nine months onto our Water Support Scheme which provides a 50% bill discount. We’ve made the application process as easy as possible without the need to provide lots of evidence and information. Since launch on Friday 27 March we have had around 700 applications
• We have further promoted our Priority Services Register which provides a range of additional support to those that need it, as well as contacting all those already registered.
We know our customers are relying on us to keep their taps running and the above is intended to demonstrate the actions we are taking to maintain our essential public service and support those in need. As well as being a local company playing a vital part in people’s daily lives, we also want to actively support the areas we are privileged to serve. That’s why we were the first company to make a financial donation to the Surrey Coronavirus Response Fund through the Community Foundation for Surrey and we are also in the process of offering our support in other ways, including contacting local voluntary co-ordination groups, councils and charities.
As an industry, we are working collaboratively and welcome the support we have had from Government and Defra so far - it is clear they understand how important it is to maintain our service. Your contribution towards this support in whatever way you feel appropriate, such as acknowledging the need to prioritise our workers for testing to increase our resilience, would be appreciated.
Clearly this is an unprecedented and fast-moving situation but we will continue to implement the comprehensive plans we have in place to ensure we, along with our supply chain partners, are able to still treat and distribute millions of litres of water to homes, schools, hospitals and businesses every single day.
Please find attached Water industry response to COVID-19