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Tue, 14 Apr 2026

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 Customers failed over outages, water boss tells MPs

Bosses at South East Water are grilled over failures that left thousands without water over winter.
South East Water (SEW) boss Chris Train admitted that his company "failed" customers due to severe supply issues last winter, affecting tens of thousands of people. Some 24,000 properties lost water or had low pressure in November and December, with a further 30,000 affected weeks later. Train told MPs that the company "failed on the basic objective of delivering water". He added: "It is absolutely untenable for customers to be without water." SEW chief executive David Hinton was grilled by MPs from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on Tuesday. Hinton has faced multiple calls to resign over the supply failures, but Train said the company's board was backing him. However, a source close to Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds told the BBC that she believes SEW is being held back by its leadership. Tunbridge Wells MP Mike Martin described Hinton and other SEW leaders as giving a "pathetic performance" at the committee. Hinton said he wanted to "keep pushing on", despite calls for him to step down. Bills for SEW customers are set to rise by 7% from April, bringing the average yearly bill to £324. Businesses affected by the supply failures lost tens of thousands of pounds, while one resident likened the January outage to "Armageddon". A number of schools were forced to close due to the lack of water for showering and flushing toilets. SEW has launched a £600,000 fund for businesses to claim compensation, but this was deemed insufficient by committee members. The Drinking Water Inspectorate's investigation found that the outages were "foreseeable and preventable", with longstanding weaknesses in management, monitoring, maintenance and organisational preparedness blamed. The inspectorate added SEW has been placed in a "transformation programme" aimed at fixing the root causes of poor performance. Ofwat proposed a £22m fine for SEW over disruptions affecting 286,000 people between 2020 and 2023, but this does not cover newer failures. Hinton acknowledged that climate change played an "element factor" in the outages, with the speed and severity of weather events in the South East outstripping predictions. SEW is investing £2.1bn into infrastructure and resilience over the next five years. Chairman Train called for urgent investment to prevent similar incidents from happening again. The regulator's chief executive Chris Walters said that SEW was making "steps forward", but only time would tell if they were sufficient.