Dependable water systems are one of the core foundations upon which societies are built.
From immense Roman aqueducts to grand Victorian sewers, plumbing has underpinned public health, enabled cities to grow, and pushed once‑deadly diseases like cholera and typhoid to the margins.
Yet in the UK today, this foundation is cracking – with widespread outages, sewage‑choked rivers, and water companies struggling to deliver the very basics they were created to guarantee.
Nearly 2,000 years after Pliny the Elder wrote of the Roman plumbing system that “there has never been anything more remarkable in the whole world,” people in Britain would be hard-pressed to agree.
In recent weeks, tens of thousands of people living in the southeast of England have seen first hand what the breakdown of water provision looks like.
“We couldn’t wash or shower, we couldn’t flush the toilet for two days. It was full of excrement. I had to plunge it to clean it all up. It was disgusting really,” Tunbridge Wells resident David Ayre told The Independent, while queuing for bottled water at the town’s rugby club.
This week alone, South East Water outages meant 30,000 properties were without water in parts of Kent and East Sussex.
This followed another major halt to the water supplies in the area, which began in November and lasted into December, affecting around 24,000 homes.
Local MP Mike Martin, a Liberal Democrat, told The Independent the scale of the problem meant South East Water had “lost all credibility”.
“The damage is immense and all widespread,” he said. “We’re talking tens of millions of pounds lost for local businesses. Children missing weeks of education. Parents having to fork out huge sums of money for last-minute childcare. The old and vulnerable being put in harm's way. This has been the most damaging crisis to hit Tunbridge Wells since Covid.”
He added: “It doesn’t help that private equity has totally stripped South East Water of cash and has saddled them with debt.”
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Meanwhile, South East Water’s neighbour, Southern Water, has displayed a similarly torrid record. On 23 December, the main pipe bringing water into Hastings burst, causing enormous local concern in the run up to Christmas about whether there would be running water. Hundreds of households then lost supply or experienced low pressure on Christmas Day. This followed a major outage in May 2024, in which around 32,500 properties lost their water supply for up to five days.
The company has recently been involved in a catastrophic spill of millions of plastic bio-beads used in a water treatment facility, which are now washing up along the South Coast, with serious concerns raised over environmental implications. Case after case of sewage pollution and failure to properly monitor sewage overflows means waterways and the sea are also routinely pumped with human waste.
Labour MP for Hastings, Helena Dollimore, said: “Hastings, Rye and the villages have had failure after failure from Southern Water. We’ve had major water outages, we’ve had flooding in our town centre. We’ve had sewage in the sea, and millions of plastic beads washing up on our coastline. These are things which people are completely frustrated with.
“What has become evident to us is that our town’s infrastructure and the water pipes have just been neglected for decades, not properly maintained and we’re now seeing the consequences of that.”
She added: “Money that was meant to be spent on maintaining and repairing pipes was instead siphoned off into shareholder dividends and payouts and bonuses for many decades.”
Around the country, serious sewage spills were up a massive 60 per cent in 2025.
One of the worst culprits was another company in the southeast, Thames Water, which accounted for 33 of 75 serious incidents recorded by the Environment Agency in 2024 – more than a third of the total.
Facing collapse due to huge debts, as well as inability to fix leaks and stop sewage spills, the embattled water company has obtained permission from UK water regulator Ofwat to raise bills by 35 per cent over five years – outraging customers, not least because, since privatisation in 1989, the company has paid out an eye-watering £10bn to shareholders.
This week, a Survation poll of Thames Water customers found the majority now want the water company to be nationalised.
One thing in common also unites these water companies: they’re all now seeking to raise bills
In October last year, Southern Water, which had already secured a 53 per cent average bill hike over the next five years, still sought a further 15 per cent increase – but was permitted to raise bills by a further 3 per cent.
At the time, the Competition and Markets Authority said the extra money would fund more resilient supply, reduce pollution, and reflect increased financing costs.
Next week, the UK government will publish a long-awaited plan on how it intends to clean up the UK’s waterways, cut pollution and improve infrastructure.
But campaigners are concerned the Labour government won’t go far enough, and could effectively serve to prop up “a broken system”.
Giles Bristow, chief executive of campaign group Surfers Against Sewage, told The Independent that the legislation will be a “critical milestone”, which must put us on the path to sewage-free waters.
“We will not hesitate to call out half-baked measures from Keir Starmer and his government,” he said. “Any plan is doomed to fail if it props up a broken system that puts profit before people and the environment.”
“Tinkering around the edges is not enough. The government must be bold, take on the polluters, and make clear that public health and deliver the systemic change the public demands, and deserves.”
Tunbridge Wells’ Mr Martin said a shake-up of the whole industry was the only way to get the UK out of the polluted hole it has dug itself.
He said: “The Lib Dems are campaigning for the creation of a public benefit model to restructure the water industry. Water companies would operate as not-for-profits and all mutual company profits would be reinvested back into the water network for public benefit. Debt would be put back onto private companies to protect taxpayers and customers from financial mismanagement.”
The UK regulator, Ofwat, this week opened an investigation into South East Water in the wake of the repeated water supply failures across Kent and Sussex.
It will investigate whether the water company has provided high enough standards of customer service and support to meet the conditions of its licence.
Following the announcement, South East Water said it would “always fully co-operate with any investigation by regulators and provide any information required”.
An Ofwat spokesperson told The Independent: “We are the economic regulator so we are constantly ensuring that companies are meeting the obligations which they have to us, and also other regulators for the sector. On wastewater specifically, we resolved six wastewater investigations in 2025, with more than £250m in fines and redress secured.”
But amid the formal calls for change, public frustration with water company bosses and in particular their high levels of pay, has reached new heights.
Last week, The Times reported that Southern Water has assigned bodyguards to travel with chief executive Lawrence Gosden, following a recent incident where he was placed under a citizen’s arrest by angry activists.
The same group has also targeted other water company bosses, including Chris Weston of Thames Water and Mark Thurston of Anglian Water.
South East Water chief executive David Hinton is under mounting pressure to quit.
As well as frustrated residents angry that he didn’t make any public appearance for 20 days after December 2025’s outage, the local MP, and leader of Kent County Council have called for his resignation, while MPs have recalled him to parliament following an environment committee hearing during which, his account amounted to “misleading parliament and holding the House of Commons in contempt”, MPs said.
A Defra spokesperson said: “It is entirely unacceptable that several areas in the South East have been experiencing water supply issues and water bosses must be held accountable.
“However, nationalisation is not the answer. It would cost taxpayers £100bn, diverting money from hospitals and schools, while years of unpicking the current ownership model would see investment dry up and sewage pollution worsen.
“Our Water White Paper will set out the long-term systemic reforms needed to clean up our water for good, including prioritising investment in our water infrastructure to improve resilience.”
A Thames Water spokesperson told The Independent: “We remain focused on working with London and Valley Water consortium and all stakeholders on a holistic market-led solution that is deliverable, will return Thames Water to an investment grade credit rating, and benefits customers, the environment, taxpayers and the UK economy.”
The Independent has contacted Southern Water and South East Water for comment.
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