United Utilities has been fined a total of £200,000 and additional costs of £54,000 at a sentencing hearing in Bolton Crown Court this week.

On 30 January 2018, the water company pleaded guilty to supplying inadequately disinfected water from the Sweetloves water treatment works in Bolton on two occasions.

The charges were brought by the Drinking Water Inspectorate – commenting on the court’s sentencing decision, Marcus Rink, Chief Inspector of Drinking Water said:

‘These were serious failures by the company to maintain control of water treatment processes, and which have been duly recognised by the court. The Inspectorate will continue to require the company to meet the drinking water quality standards in place to protect consumers’.

The charges relate to two events between 31 March – 3 April 2015 and 19 July – 22 July 2015. Sweetloves Water Treatment Works is located approximately 3 miles to the North of Bolton. At the time of both events, the works was supplying a total population of just under 80,000 people.

The events arose due to the failures of sample pumps serving monitoring equipment critical for controlling the treatment process.

The DWI said that while there were no cases of ill health linked to the events, however the time taken to restore the water treatment process at Sweetloves to an acceptable standard following the second event did have an impact on consumers normally supplied by the works.

According to the DWI, the offences committed by the company were, in part, attributable to the absence of procedures to prevent the continued supply of water in cases where there was a failure in preliminary treatment or disinfection at Sweetloves.

There was also a failure by the company to properly implement its own procedures with regards the implementation of, and response to, alarms at critical control points in the water treatment process at Sweetloves.

The July 2015 event resulted in a significant impact on consumers in the Bolton Area. Nearly 18,000 properties were without water for nearly a day on 20 July and then had to boil all water destined for drinking or food preparation until the afternoon of 23 July.

The fines were £50,000 in respect of charges relating to the first event and £150,000 in respect of charges relating to the second event.

“The striking similarity of the initial phase of the event in July to the event in April demonstrates that the company failed to take adequate steps and learn appropriate lessons from the April event.” The DWI said.

Since the water supply incident in 2015, United Utilities has paid £1.5 million in automatic compensation to customers, together with investing more than £150 million in new treatment processes and staff training

The water company has apologised for the incident - Martin Padley, Director of Water and Scientific Services at United Utilities, said:

“We are very sorry for the impact this incident had on our customers three years ago.

"We take our responsibility to supply safe drinking water very seriously. We have invested more than £150 million on new technology and processes including a fail-safe system at Sweetloves treatment works, to make sure this type of event does not happen again, and customers can have complete confidence in their tap water.”