South East Water fined £22m by regulator for repeated supply failures
South East Water is to be fined £22 million over repeated “major” water supply failures that caused “major” disruption to hundreds of thousands of customers.
Ofwat announced on Thursday it planned to fine the water company for faults affecting more than 286,000 people between 2020 and 2023, saying: “They need to do better.”
The water regulator said it consulted on the penalty after homes in Kent and Sussex were affected by numerous water cuts over the years.
The watchdog said South East Water “lacked ownership” of fixing the root cause of supply disruptions and failed to protect key infrastructure.
He said investigations found the water company had “failed to maintain supply system flexibility” to minimize incidents and had failed to plan to ensure it had adequate space to deal with periods of high demand.
These problems caused the water system to be “more likely to fail” during periods of prolonged drought or when frozen water thaws.
According to Ofwat, customers were unable to get running water, shower or bathe and have toilets flushed.
The investigation found that the company’s response to these problems was “slow and erratic”.
It noted a shortage of bottled water and said there were “not enough tankers or support for vulnerable customers.”
Chris Walters, Ofwat’s interim chief executive, said: “South East Water’s significant failures have caused major disruption and had a major impact on thousands of its customers.
“Not only has the company failed in its duty to provide water supplies to meet customers’ demands, it has also failed to provide support to customers who have lost their supply.
“They should do better.”
A South East Water spokesman said: “We recently sought judicial review of Ofwat’s draft decision and sought interim relief.
“After the hearing, the court did not issue an interim injunction, we respect the court’s decision on this matter.
“We are currently assessing Ofwat’s draft decision and will respond through appropriate channels ahead of a final decision. We have no further comment at this time.”
Ofwat said consultation on the penalty proposal will remain open until April 13.
The regulator added that South East Water had “lacked ownership of these issues” and as a result subsequent outages were still occurring all too regularly.
In recent months, tens of thousands of households and businesses have been left without power in Kent and Sussex due to repeated outages since November.
Tunbridge Wells experienced a rolling blackout in November and December; Nearly 24,000 properties in the Kent town and surrounding area were left without potable water for almost two weeks.
In January, Ofwat said South East Water was under investigation over the new problems.
