South East Water told to cough up £31m and improve infrastructure Water South East Water has been ordered to cough up a hefty redress and create an improvement plan for its operations after multiple investigations by the industry regulator found failures in its infrastructure and customer service. The utility firm – which supplies drinking water to 2.3m customers across the likes of Kent, Sussex and Surrey – [...]
Heat wave bottle jobs: Water firms set up emergency supply points in Kent, with tankers on standby Water With temperatures setting records for May over the long bank holiday weekend, emergency supplies of bottled water were sent to two major Kent towns and hundreds of Brits were hit with interruptions to their water supply. Distribution points were set up in Faversham and Ramsgate as a precaution, amid problems with infrastructure in the area. [...]
South East Water boss David Hinton resigns Water The chief executive of South East Water, David Hinton, resigned from the embattled utility today, after presiding over one of the scandal-hit industry’s most notorious supply failures. Hinton was in charge during a series of outages in Tunbridge Wells and Kent in November and December 2025. There were more outages last January. As the firm struggled [...]
South East Water chair quits after damning report by MPs May 1, 2026 The chair of South East Water has resigned with immediate effect after a damning report by MPs into supply issues facing the utilities business. Non-executive chair Chris Train has departed after tens of thousands of residents in Kent faced disruption to water supplies in November and December. In a statement South East Water said: “Board [...]
Is South East Water’s £22m fine a step towards total renationalisation? March 10, 2026 The total mess that Thames Water and South East Water find themselves in – which touch on issues of environmental neglect, underinvestment in critical infrastructure, the limits of privatisation and the role of shareholders in utility companies that operate an effective monopoly – could be a harbinger of what’s to come, says Brett Israel Last [...]
South East Water in spat with watchdog after £22m fine March 5, 2026 South East Water has entered a heated spat with the water regulator after it was hit with a £22m fine. The water firm’s fine covers multiple supply interruptions in Kent and Sussex between the period of 2020 and 2023, effecting more than 286,000 people. Ofwat said its investigations into the water firm found it had [...]
Mark Kleinman: South East Water’s excuses have run dry February 5, 2026 Mark Kleinman is Sky News’ City Editor and the man who gets the Square Mile talking in his weekly City AM column South East Water’s excuses have run dry How the water industry could do with the raising of a Mervyn King eyebrow. While governor of the Bank of England in 2012, Lord King defenestrated Bob Diamond as [...]
Nationalising water would turn off the investment taps January 16, 2026 Government has neither the money nor the capacity to run our water industry and nationalisation would be the surest way to stop investment in it. Only the private sector has deep enough pockets to fund that level of investment, says Natascha Engel People across Kent and Sussex have had to use their neighbour’s toilets and [...]
Pennon mega-deal for Sutton and East Surrey Water facing competition probe March 7, 2024 Pennon paid £89m in equity but the total enterprise deal was worth £380m