South East Water must pay a £30.5 million redress package after a series of supply interruptions, customer service failings, and a credit rating downgrade that breached its operating licence, the industry regulator Ofwat said.
The penalty includes a previously proposed £22 million fine for supply failures between 2020 and 2023 that affected more than 286,000 people. A second investigation found that interruptions in Kent and Sussex between November and January left up to 70,000 homes without water, forcing school closures and disrupting work and medical care. A third probe followed the downgrading of the company's credit rating by Moody's in May, which violated a licence condition.
Ofwat found the company failed to communicate clearly with customers or provide adequate bottled water during the outages. The redress, funded by shareholders rather than customer bills, earmarks £13 million for fixing supply failures, alongside spending on community funds, water butts, smart metering, and on-site storage. Ofwat will appoint an independent monitor to oversee the company's performance improvement plan.