Troubled water agency faces sack for leaving 30,000 houses excessive and dry for days
Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds has called on the regulator Ofwat to review South East Water’s operating licence after leaving properties in Kent and West Sussex dry
Homes have been left without water(Image: Getty)
South East Water faces the sack for leaving 30,000 homes without H2O for days.
Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds has called for regulator Ofwat to review the company’s operating licence. Should it be stripped of it the company would fall into a special administration regime until a buyer was found.
If Ofwat rules the firm has breached its licence but does not revoke it penalties include a fine of 10% of its annual turnover. In 2024 the regulator decided Thames Water was in breach of its licence but decided not to force it into special measures and insisted on a turnaround plan.
Around 30,000 properties in Kent and West Sussex have faced having low or no water since the weekend. Locals have been unable to wash and schools and businesses have been forced to close.
Water supply points have run out and a lorry delivering bottles became stuck in the mud. The disruption followed a shortage before Christmas when for two weeks 24,000 properties in the area were left without drinking water.
The company has blamed bad weather for leaks in its ageing pipe system and warned customer bills must rise to fund ‘resilience’ work to prevent further shortages.
Water companies have a legal duty to maintain sufficient supplies.
Ms Reynolds said: “I met with local residents in Tunbridge Wells who are facing huge levels of disruption to their water supplies. It’s completely unacceptable. I recognise their frustrations and want to thank people for pulling together.
“These failures cannot continue to happen. This Government is reforming our water system and securing investment into our infrastructure to avoid incidents like this in future.”
South East Water’s chief executive David Hinton has faced cross-party political pressure to resign after failing to appear in public during both crises. At a recent environment, food and rural affairs parliamentary committee hearing Hinton gave himself eight out of 10 for dealing with water shortages.
He has a base salary of £400,000 and received a bonus of £115,000 last year. Hinton told the committee he did not do interviews during the last outage because the questions would focus on his pay and bonus which he believed would have been a distraction.
NatWest Group Pension Fund, which owns 25% of South East Water, said it was ‘extremely concerned’ by the impact the outage was having on households adding it would use its influence to put pressure on the board to resolve the issues.
An Ofwat spokesman said: “We are concerned that residents in Kent and Sussex are without water again and are working with the Drinking Water Inspectorate, which is the lead regulator for this latest supply interruption, to ensure that regulation and enforcement is aligned. Ofwat already has an active investigation into South East Water related to its supply resilience.
“We will review all of the evidence before taking a decision on what further action may be required into whether the company has met its legal obligations set out in its licence relating to customer care, including with further potential enforcement action.”
The water company said it was doing ‘everything’ it could to support affected customers and its repair teams was working ‘around the clock’ to restore supplies.
“The company will always fully cooperate with any investigation by our regulators and provide any information required,” it added.
For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.
