Ofwat accused of cover-up over dinners with water companies

Ladybower Reservoir, operated by the UK’s second-largest publicly traded water company, Severn Trent Water. Its regulator has failed to declare the hospitality it received from the board. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

The water regulator for England and Wales has been accused of a cover-up after failing to declare dinners its chairman had with water company executives at a private members’ club as hospitality.

The Guardian revealed earlier this month that the Ofwat chairman, Iain Coucher, went for dinner with the water company chairs at the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall, an exclusive private members’ club, to discuss how to quell public anger over bill rises and sewage spills. But there was no sign of these dinners on his official hospitality logs that were revealed under freedom of information requests from the Liberal Democrats.