Well enough by car, and badly by anything else. Barely anyone takes the train to work. More than a third work from home. Over half of households run two cars or more. The fastest connection in the village is the fibre.
Southwater has no station of its own. The nearest named options are Christs Hospital, Horsham, Littlehaven and Warnham, and about 1% of working residents took the train to work at the last Census. The bus managed about 1% too, from 43 stops across the area. Public transport exists here in the way a gym membership exists for most people: paid for and rarely used.
The commute mix is where the truth comes out. About 50% of working residents drove to work and 37% worked from home, which together account for almost everyone. Walking reached 5%, and cycling about 1%. Only about 8% of households have no car, and 57% have two or more. Southwater worked out long ago that the train was someone else's problem.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics are modelled for the area as a whole, not timed from any particular front door. They put the nearest town centre about 14 minutes away by car, 27 by bike, 35 by public transport and 69 on foot. That walk is the finding: an hour and ten minutes each way to the shops is a hike, not an errand.
The same statistics cover everyday destinations. A GP is about 8 minutes by car, 20 on foot or 18 by public transport. A hospital is about 35 minutes by car and 76 by public transport. A food store is about 8 minutes by car or 16 on foot, and the nearest cluster of jobs about 11 minutes by car or 13 by public transport. The public transport figures date from 2019, and services have been cut since in plenty of places, so trust the car and walking times more than the bus ones.
Current timetable data is kinder to the buses than the commuting figures suggest. Stops here average about 85 scheduled departures each on a weekday and about 4 in the peak hour, and 85% of stops have at least some weekend service. That's a real service, not two buses a day and a prayer. Residents mostly just don't use it.
Broadband is where Southwater comes out ahead. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 87% of premises and superfast about 98%, and no premises fall below the universal service minimum. That explains the working-from-home figure better than any lifestyle piece about the four-day week could.
Mobile coverage from at least one operator reaches all of the area, and coverage from every operator about 99%. Nobody needs to stand in the garden to make a call.
Road noise is the catch that comes with all this car use. Every postcode in the area sits near or above 65 decibels on the official road-noise mapping, the level at which that mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band recorded reaches 75 decibels. Rail noise doesn't register at all. How loud it is in any particular house depends on the house, so listen at the viewing rather than trusting the brochure's birdsong.
Electric car owners get a thin deal. The area has one public charge point with two connections, one of them rapid. With a single rapid unit, charging here is something you do on your own driveway or plan around, not something you fit in while shopping.
Southwater is connected well enough for anyone with a car and good broadband, and poorly for anyone without either. Middling is the fair word, and it gets there on driveways, not on public transport.