Customers failed over outages, water boss tells MPs

The chairman of South East Water has admitted the company "failed on the basic objective of delivering water" after severe winter supply disruptions left tens of thousands of people without water or facing low pressure across Kent and Sussex. Some 24,000 properties were impacted in November and December, followed by another 30,000 just weeks later during an outage that one resident likened to "Armageddon". Grilled by MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on Tuesday, SEW chairman Chris Train conceded the company's shortcomings. "It is absolutely untenable for customers to be without water," he added. The fallout has placed intense scrutiny on SEW chief executive David Hinton, who earns a base salary of £400,000 and received a £115,000 bonus last year. While Hinton has faced multiple calls to resign, Train told the committee that the company's board was backing him, noting that the chief executive has surrendered his upcoming bonus for this year. When asked if he intended to step down, Hinton told the BBC he wanted to "keep pushing on". "I feel really emotionally connected to the service and the communities that I serve," he said. However, politicians remain unconvinced by the leadership. A source close to Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds told the BBC she believes SEW is now being held back by its leadership. Tunbridge Wells MP Mike Martin said SEW's leadership had given a "pathetic performance" at the committee. "If the board thinks Dave Hinton is the best person for the job, then they too are failing in their job," he told the BBC. The outages, which SEW blamed on issues like Storm Goretti and power cuts, forced schools to close and left residents unable to shower, bathe, or flush their toilets. Businesses previously told the BBC they lost tens of thousands of pounds due to the supply failures. SEW has launched a £600,000 fund for affected businesses to claim compensation, but committee chair Alistair Carmichael argued on Tuesday that the amount "does not touch the sides". Consumer confidence has been deeply shaken by the crises. Dr Mike Keil, CEO at the Consumer Council for Water, told the committee that a survey of local SEW customers showed 54% now store bottled water in case of another outage. Furthermore, nearly a fifth of people now only drink bottled water after the company issued a boil water notice for several days. "This type of interruption, of this duration, has lasting damage and lasting consequences," he said. Hinton acknowledged on Tuesday that the company had learnt some lessons following the supply failures, but added: "Clearly we've got a lot more to learn". He conceded he "got it wrong" over how quickly he communicated with the public, a point echoed by committee member Josh Newbury, who described SEW's communications at the time as "haphazard and inconsistent". The Drinking Water Inspectorate said its investigation found that an issue at one of the treatment works in November—which left homes in Tunbridge Wells, Pembury, Eridge, and Frant without drinking water for nearly two weeks—was "foreseeable and preventable". The inspectorate blamed "longstanding weaknesses" in management, monitoring, maintenance, and organisational preparedness, placing SEW in a "transformation programme" aimed at fixing the "root causes of poor performance". "If we had spotted it earlier we would have resolved it," Hinton admitted regarding the treatment works failure. The company is now facing severe regulatory and financial pressures. Ofwat proposed fining SEW £22m in March over earlier disruptions affecting 286,000 people between 2020 and 2023, and is also investigating whether the company has breached its licence conditions. Speaking to the committee, Ofwat chief executive Chris Walters said they were seeing SEW making "steps forward". "Only time will tell if those are sufficient," he said. SEW, which is owned by a group of investment and pension funds led by Utilities Trust of Australia, carries a debt of £1.3bn and serves about 2.3 million people. The company has said it is investing £2.1bn into infrastructure and resilience over the next five years, with Train calling climate change an "element factor" in the outages. He said the "speed and severity" of climate change in the South East has "outstripped reasonable predictions". Meanwhile, customers are facing a 7% bill increase from April, bringing the average yearly bill to £324 for 2026/27, up from £303 the year before.