Help for stricken residents who suffered during the water crisis last week should be the district council’s priority, not politicising the issue for personal or Party gain, say a group of Wealden councillors.
Conservatives are appalled that the acting council leader has chosen to “score cheap political points at the expense of practical help” and is maintaining its call for an emergency meeting of the authority so that the matter can be properly discussed.
“What’s top priority now is to assist those who were left without running water for a week, and to ensure that such a disaster won’t occur again”, said Conservative leader Cllr Ann Newton. “This is not the time for cheap jibes and inaccurate claims about the possible causes of the calamity. That does no help at all and is not warmly received by those who have been struggling during the emergency. Lessons must be learned and learned fast so that we do not have a repetition of this fiasco when temperatures rise again.”
The Conservative group says the council should have done more to alleviate the distress of residents, not least in terms of communications.
“Not once during the entire week of disruption did the acting council leader make contact with me”, said Michael Lunn, the Conservative councillor for one of the worse affected areas, Hadlow Down and Rotherfield. “While some of us were working hard, on the ground, to afford practical help to households, businesses and farms, it seems as though the person left running the council was too busy visiting TV studio to make political capital out the victims.”
Wealden District Council came under fire for not invoking agreeing to an emergency council meeting and for failing to invoke what’s known as a joint-agency Gold Command, claiming that only South-East Water were able to sanction this.
“Today, however, the acting council leader has said that the district authority set-up its own, internal Gold Command but in essence this was merely a senior council officer in regular dialogue with the water company to share updates”, adds Cllr Lunn. “It is more than disappointing that all our requests for help on the ground were ignored by the council’s acting Leader and South-East Water.”
Pictured: Conservative Cllr Michael Lunn pictured helping at one of the emergency water stations
