Thames Water is ramping up the pressure on those who illegally tap into supplies and steal water after four separate offenders were heavily fined in court.

Two street cleaning companies, Kilgannon Street Care and Go Plant Fleet Services, pleaded guilty to multiple offences of using unauthorised and unlicensed standpipes across London and the Thames Valley to take water from street connections.

Each day, hundreds of thousands of litres are lost due to individuals and companies illegally connecting into the network, with everything stolen classed as leakage. Kilgannon and a parent company of Go-Plant have both been previously convicted of identical offences in recent years.

Steve Johnston, an investigator for Thames Water, commented:

“It was very disappointing to have to go to court again but we hope this sends out a powerful message. We work around the clock to cut leakage and ask our customers to use water wisely, so it is not fair for others to take water without paying. We will always look to work with companies before going to court but if lessons are not learnt then we have no hesitation about taking further action.”

The prosecutions come on the back of two more cases of water theft which saw several landlords fined for connecting properties to the local network without informing Thames Water.

Claire Rumens, illegal connections manager at Thames Water, said:

“Both of these cases show Thames Water will prosecute people who illegally connect to our clean water network, that the courts are taking these cases seriously and offenders will be made to pay significant fines.

“Illegally connecting to our network risks the safety, security and reliability of our supply to paying customers, and the unaccounted for water stolen during illegal connections adds to our leakage figures.”

Thames Water is currently spending over a £1 million a day tackling leakage. As part of its £11.7 billion business plan for 2020-25, the company has pledged to spend £2.1bn on increasing resilience and reducing leakage by 15 per cent by 2025, with plans to halve it in the longer term. Around 1,500 leaks on average are being fixed every week, a 10-year high.

Recent water theft prosecutions undertaken by the company include:

On February 20, Kilgannon Street Care, based in Deptford, pleaded guilty to seven offences under the Water Industry Act 1991 at Camberwell Green Magistrates’ Court. The company was ordered to pay £9,000, which includes a £5,950 fine and £3,000 costs. A driver was spotted filling his road sweeper with water from an unlicensed standpipe by a member of the public who had read about the risks of water theft in the media.

Further investigation by Thames Water found six other offences being carried out in London and Kent in 2018. Although Kilgannon was given credit by the court for pleading guilty, the courts uplifted the fines as the company had previously admitted four identical charges in 2017.

National street-cleaning company Go Plant Fleet Services, based in Leicester, admitted five offences under the Water Industry Act 1991 on February 21 at Reading Magistrates’ Court after being caught taking water by Thames Water investigators.

The company was ordered to pay £8,500 which included a £3,300 fine and £5,145 costs as well as a victim surcharge. The company was initially caught four times in Banbury, London and Reading but a fifth charge was added when they were caught again in High Wycombe just days before they were due to appear in court on the previous charges. The court also heard how parent company Go Plant Ltd had been fined for exactly the same offence by four other water companies since 2013.

In the other recent prosecutions, Thames Water acted after receiving video evidence of illegal supplies being installed to four new-build houses in the Waltham Forest area and also took action over the illegal connection of a water supply to four flats under conversion in Stratford.