The Government has welcomed the cross-party House of Commons Environment. Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee’s damning report into South East Water (SEW), which prompted the resignations of its Chair and Chief Executive.
The response says:
“South East Water’s performance is clearly below the standard that customers and Government are entitled to expect. Repeated disruption to supply, weaknesses in operational resilience and the company’s ongoing
regulatory breaches point to serious and unacceptable failings. The company is funded to deliver the necessary improvements, and it must now show credible leadership, a robust plan and early evidence of deliver.”
In its May report, MPs on the EFRA Committee stated they had lost confidence in the company’s senior leadership and its ability to turn the firm around.
The report highlighted many long-term failings, such as maintenance and monitoring of infrastructure, a failure to communicate with customers and to respond to serious outages. A lack of accountability between SEW’s board and executive also stood in the way of improvement – MPs concluded that new leadership was needed.
The response says:
“South East Water’s performance is clearly below the standard that customers and Government are entitled to expect. Repeated disruption to supply, weaknesses in operational resilience and the company’s ongoing
regulatory breaches point to serious and unacceptable failings. The company is funded to deliver the necessary improvements, and it must now show credible leadership, a robust plan and early evidence of deliver…..
“The failures at SEW have reinforced the Government’s determination to deliver the most significant reform of the water sector since privatisation. The Water (Special Measures) Act introduced the toughest enforcementpowers the sector has seen in over a decade.”
In the response, Defra Minister Emma Hardy writes:
“The Government is grateful to the Committee for its thorough scrutiny of these important issues and welcomes its continued engagement as we work together to strengthen the water sector. The failures at South East Water were unacceptable, and the Government is committed to delivering the reforms necessary to drive lasting improvements and reduce the risk of similar failures occurring in the future.”
Hardy adds that it was right that SEW’s leadership “has taken responsibility”, and outlines proposals in the forthcoming Clean Water Bill.
EFRA Committee Chair Alistair Carmichael MP said:
“Our scrutiny of South East Water goes to show that where we see evidence of serious or systemic failure in the drinking water sector, we will be ready to hold bosses to account.
“However, it is a poor indictment of the system that it falls to a parliamentary select committee to ensure that the sector makes better decisions. We look forward to the Government bringing forward its Clean Water Bill and kicking the tyres on Defra’s plans to get a grip of this deeply troubled sector.”
The Committee’s scrutiny of SEW came after a two-week drinking water outage in Tunbridge Wells in November and December 2025, and further outages in January across parts of Kent and Sussex.
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