South East Water fined £22.5m for ‘repeated supply failures’ in Kent and Sussex

South East Water fined £22.5m for ‘repeated supply failures’ in Kent and Sussex Regulator says failures that hit nearly 300,000 customers made worse by utility’s failure to maintain efficient supply system Business live – latest updates South East Water has been fined £22.5m by Ofwat for repeated supply failures in Kent and Sussex between 2020 and 2023 that affected more than 280,000 people. While the root cause of the water shortages was extreme weather, the water regulator for England and Wales found that they were “in part attributable to and/or exacerbated by failures by South East Water itself to develop and maintain an efficient water supply system”. This has affected 286,645 customers since 2020, with some customers being affected repeatedly, Ofwat said in its enforcement order proposal . In January, Ofwat began a separate investigation into a series of outages before Christmas that left tens of thousands of residents in Kent and Sussex without water for up to a week , many of them in Tunbridge Wells. This prompted the environment secretary, Emma Reynolds, to call for the regulator to review the company’s operating licence. Chris Walters, Ofwat’s interim chief executive, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The investigation reveals that South East Water did not take sufficient steps to plan, to learn from previous events. For example, the big freeze event we had in 2018. “We all remember the “beast from the east ”, and it didn’t proactively maintain its network. All the things it needs to do to prevent a lack of supply resilience, so tankering and storage tanks and storage reservoirs. ” Walters said the fine would be paid by the company and “won’t show up on customers’ bills”. A spokesperson for South East Water said: “We recently filed for judicial review of an Ofwat draft decision and sought an injunction. Following a hearing, the court did not grant the interim injunction. We respect the court’s decision on this. “We are now considering Ofwat’s draft deci...