South East Water to pay £30.5m penalty after multiple supply failures

South East Water staff hand out bottled water in East Grinstead after outages in Kent and parts of Sussex in January this year. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

South East Water will pay £30.5m after a series of supply interruptions, customer failings and for breaching its licence, the regulator Ofwat has said.

The watchdog said the redress package concluded three investigations into the supplier and included a previously proposed £22m fine for water supply failures between 2020 and 2023 affecting more than 286,000 people.