South East Water is due to be fined £22million by regulator OfWat. This is not for the recent outages - but for failures during outages in 2020 and 2023, along with failing to maintain and invest in the water network.
Ofwat’s investigation of those earlier outages said South East Water’s response, ‘was slow and disorganised, with shortages of bottled water and not enough tankers or support for vulnerable customers. It also failed to learn lessons from previous incidents, including the Beast from the East in 2018.’
This is exactly what we saw last summer and yet again this winter.
South East Water should be penalised for letting people down again and again. I also want to see some of that money go to compensate residents and businesses.
But make no mistake - this cannot go on. South East Water have got to get their act together.
I have no confidence in the current Chief Executive’s ability to turn this around. He has worked for South East Water since the turn of the century and has been Chief Executive since 2020. These repeated failures are on his watch. There must be accountability at the top and he must go.
I have raised this with Ministers in the House of Commons and written to both the Secretary of State and Chairman of South East Water again calling on them to act. You can see my letters below. I am also making sure that South East Water bosses are not financially rewarded for these failures – either with big bonuses or payoffs.
Ofwat have confirmed that if their proposed financial penalty is implemented their new performance-related executive pay (PRP) prohibition rule will be triggered. This prevents PRP, such as annual bonuses for directors, when the company fails to meet certain standards.
South East Water is a publicly regulated company and there must be accountability at the top for the abysmal performance we are seeing time and time again.
Link to previous website article: Fighting for accountability from South East Water | Helen Whately
