Ex-Southern Water boss charged over ‘plan to manipulate quality tests’
The former chief executive of Southern Water has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the authorities over allegations he was involved in a scheme to manipulate water quality tests to avoid multimillion-pound fines, which can now be reported.
Matthew Wright, along with three others, are accused of conspiring to defraud the Environment Agency (EA) and water regulator Ofwat.
EA had previously asked a judge to issue criminal charges and summonses against Wright, as well as Philip Barker, Clive Massey and Mark Gregory, who worked at the company.
The subpoena was issued last year, but Wright later launched a legal challenge over the move, with his lawyers telling the Supreme Court in June that EA did not have the authority to issue it and that it should be dismissed as “invalidity”.
On Wednesday, two senior judges rejected Wright’s claim and ruled that previous restrictions preventing notification of the legal challenge should be lifted.
Separate court listings show the case against Barker, 57, of Haslemere, Surrey, Chiltington, West Sussex, Massey, 64, of Brandhill, Shropshire, and Gregory, 63, of Southampton, is scheduled to be heard at Medway Magistrates’ Court on July 14.
The four are accused of conspiring to defraud Southern Water’s “public servants in terms of environmental and financial regulations” between 2012 and 2017, including the EA and Ofwat, by “implementing artificial flow interruption practices at wastewater treatment plants”.
Court lists also show Southern Water was separately charged with dozens of criminal offenses for failing to comply with or violating environmental permit conditions at multiple wastewater treatment plants between 2013 and 2017.
Wastewater treatment works can only be carried out with an environmental permit issued by EA.
Treated wastewater discharge from factories is tested under an “operator self-monitoring” (OSM) program introduced in 2009, in which discharges are tested annually with unannounced visits.
The tests are carried out by sampling teams working separately from the teams carrying out the studies.
The results of the tests are shared with the EA and water regulator Ofwat, and penalties can be imposed if work does not comply with permit conditions.
If the discharge flow at the time of the test is not sufficient to take a sample, this is not considered a failure and the sample is not taken for the remainder of the test period.
The rules regarding OSM were tightened last year; including rescheduling samples if flow is insufficient, with the current Labor government promising to end the practice.
District Judge Stephen Leake, in his judgment granting the summons against the four men last year, said: “The agency alleges in the present case that there was a deliberate plan by company officials to manipulate the OSM regime by concocting operational conditions so that there was no flow to the relevant site at times when it was believed that the site would fail or could pass the OSM test, in order to avoid the consequences of the actual OSM result provided to the agency and Ofwat.”
