South East Water Handed £22 Million Fine for Repeated Outages
An employee of South East Water Ltd. fills cars with water bottles at a water collection point, during a water supply outage, in East Grinstead, UK.
Photographer: Carlos Jasso/BloombergSouth East Water Ltd. was fined £22 million ($29 million) after the industry regulator blamed it for a series of supply outages that affected nearly 300,000 customers between 2020 and 2023.
Ofwat proposed the penalty on Thursday after a failed attempt by South East Water to block it in the High Court. The two-year investigation found the utility did not maintain key assets and failed to plan sufficiently for periods of high demand.