South East Water’s greatest failure was not contacting customers during winter outages, report finds
The Guardian3 Jun 2026Market
Automatically composed with AI from the cited sources
The Consumer Council for Water (CCW) found that fewer than one in 10 South East Water customers were satisfied with the company’s handling of the winter supply disruptions. A precautionary boil-water notice was in place from 3 to 12 December 2025 for 24,000 customers in the Tunbridge Wells area, and in January 2026 about 69,000 properties suffered low pressure or loss of supply. About half of vulnerable customers registered for priority services said they did not receive the support they expected. The report was released as the company faced a £22m Ofwat fine and MP accusations of incompetence following further outages from 23 May, which the utility said were resolved on 3 June.