South East Water fined £22.5m for ‘repeated supply failures’ in Kent and Sussex

South East Water staff hand out bottled water at a water station in East Grinstead, Sussex, after bad weather was blamed for more water outages in Kent and parts of Sussex. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

South East Water has been fined £22.5m by Ofwat for repeated supply failures in Kent and Sussex between 2020 and 2023 that affected more than 280,000 people.

While the root cause of the water shortages was extreme weather, the water regulator for England and Wales found that they were “in part attributable to and/or exacerbated by failures by South East Water itself to develop and maintain an efficient water supply system”.