Ofwat hits South East Water with £30.5m fine

14th Jul 2026 09:19

(Sharecast News) - South East Water will pay £30.5m after a series of supply interruptions, customer service failures and a breach of its licence, regulator Ofwat said on Tuesday.

Ofwat said the redress package brings three investigations to a close and includes a previously proposed £22m fine for water‑supply failures between 2020 and 2023 that affected more than 286,000 people. A second probe was launched earlier this year following further outages in Tunbridge Wells and across Kent and Sussex between November and January, which left up to 70,000 homes without water.

The third investigation related to South East Water's credit rating being downgraded by Moody's in May, putting the company in breach of a licence condition. Ofwat said it would appoint an independent monitor to oversee the supplier's performance‑improvement plan and wider turnaround efforts.

Helen Campbell, Ofwat's executive director for delivery, said South East Water needed to "focus on what matters most - its customers", adding that the failures had caused "real disruption and hardship" over many years. She also stated the package marked a first step towards accountability but stressed that South East Water must deliver "meaningful, lasting changes" to ensure customers can rely on its service.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com