Beth’s experience is far from isolated. Local social media groups are filled with accounts of overflowing toilets, families attempting to wash with bottled water, and schools and small businesses forced to close.
South East Water attributed the outages to severe weather triggering leaks in its ageing pipe network, but the Drinking Water Inspectorate said the November outage may have been preventable if the company had carried out “appropriate testing” at its facility.
The most recent failure has prompted a stronger regulatory response. On Thursday (January 14), water watchdog Ofwat confirmed it had opened an investigation into whether the company had “complied with its obligation to provide high standards of customer service and support for its customers”.
“We know that this has had a huge impact on all parts of daily life and hurt businesses, particularly in the run-up to the festive period,” said Lynn Parker, Ofwat senior director for enforcement.
“That is why we need to investigate and to determine whether the company has breached its licence condition.”
Consequences could include fining South East Water up to 10% of its annual turnover.
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Beth says she “doesn’t know” what should happen to South East’s license – but that the local community are “very cross”. As a carer for her disabled son and grandson, she is registered as a ‘priority’ customer, a status that should guarantee additional support during outages.
“Priority delivery wasn’t priority and I had to send emails and messages constantly,” she said.
“When it went off this time again I sent messages but all been ignored.”
One person who has been relatively sanguine about the crisis appears to be South East Water chief executive David Hinton. Facing questions from MPs at a recent environment, food and rural affairs select committee hearing – prior to this latest outage – he rated his own performance in dealing with water shortages as eight out of 10.
Hinton has a base salary of £400,000 and received a bonus of £115,000 last year.
Pro-nationalisation group We Own It has urged the government to strip South East Water of its licence and step in.
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”The government must bring it into special administration and then permanent public ownership,” said Cat Hobbs, the group’s director. “Anything else – fines, resignations – is tinkering around the edges.
“Privatisation and regulation have been failing now since 1989, they will never work. South East Water spent more on dividends for private shareholders than on infrastructure. That’s why people don’t have access to water right now, the most basic service, and that’s why we need public ownership.”
Like several other privatised water firms, South East Water is heavily indebted. Last year it sought a £200 million cash injection from investors to avoid collapse, and secured permission to increase bills by 20% between 2025 and 2030.
For Beth and her family, the taps are back on, but she wonders for how long. “I think the majority are just cross we wasn’t kept in the know and lied to daily,” she said.
South East Water have been contacted for comment.
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