Water company boss to forgo bonus following water outage

The boss of South East Water has said he will not accept a bonus for the current financial year.

Chief executive David Hinton announced his decision after an appearance at the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee of MPs.

He is still in receipt of a £400,000 salary.

Customers of the utility had suffered a drinking water outage in Tunbridge Wells in December and January.

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People were left with no tap water, unable to shower or bathe and could not flush their toilets, while some schools were forced to close.

Last month, watchdog Ofwat said the company was to be fined £22m for repeated supply failures.

The fine relates to the water company's supply interruptions in Kent and Sussex between 2020 and 2023, which affected more than 286,000 people.

Ofwat had, in January, begun an investigation into South East Water for outages since November.

An apology

In a statement on Tuesday, Mr Hinton said, "We apologise unreservedly to all our customers for the unacceptable water outages experienced in December and January.

"We recognise the serious impact this has had on our customers and know that we fell short of what is expected of us."

It followed a contrite appearance at the EFRA Committee during which he admitted he "got it wrong" in the handling of recent water outages.

During the time of the water supply issues, Mr Hinton was repeatedly criticised for not giving interviews.

Failures at South East Water also included not spotting infrastructure issues early enough, poor routine maintenance and a "reactive culture" when it came to problems, he said.

It marked his second appearance before the committee this year.

This time, Mr Hinton conceded issues were foreseeable, saying that there were "signals" in early November.

"We should have reacted on those earlier warnings quicker and our problem solving around it when we got into that situation was too slow and unstructured," he said.

The company's performance in delivering bottled water to vulnerable users was also "disappointing", he added.

While nearly 35,000 bottled water deliveries were made, 70 were missed, the committee heard.

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