CEO message

This past year has been a deeply challenging period for South East Water.

While we made genuine progress across our core commitments, much of this work was overshadowed by serious incidents that heavily impacted the service we provide. From last summer’s drought to winter supply interruptions in Kent and Sussex, our service simply was not good enough.

Any interruption to your water supply is unacceptable.

On behalf of the Board and the Executive team, I offer our unreserved apology for these operational failures and the resulting loss of your trust. We know how frustrating these disruptions are, and we are fully accountable. We are learning from these events, investing heavily in our network, and implementing a comprehensive plan to transform our business.

Climate change is accelerating, bringing more frequent and severe weather events. Last year, England experienced its driest spring since 1893, followed by the hottest summer on record.

At South East Water, average demand for water is 550 million litres of water a day, but demand for drinking water peaked at an unprecedented 680 million litres of water a day. This is the equivalent of adding a town the size of Maidstone to our network overnight. This forced us to introduce temporary hosepipe restrictions to protect critically low reservoirs.

We know reducing leakage on our network is as important to us, as it is to our customers. We invested £63 million in leak management during the past year, fixing more than 21,000 network leaks and 6,000 customer-side leaks. The average time it takes for us to repair a leak has reduced from just under 13 days to almost nine days. We also stepped up our support to reduce water use, distributing over 153,000 free water-saving devices and launching a smart meter rollout, installing 13,413 meters in its first three months to help us detect leaks earlier.

Nevertheless, we can’t ignore the fact that there were times during the past year where we fell short of our key function, supplying top quality drinking water to our customers 24/7.

Changing raw water quality at our Pembury Water Treatment Works (WTW) near Tunbridge Wells, Kent resulted in a major incident and a nine-day precautionary Boil Water Notice for 24,000 customers.

Shortly after, a severe freeze-thaw event combined with Storm Goretti disrupted supplies for 25,000 properties across Kent and Sussex. During these crises, we undertook the largest alternative water mobilisation in our history, delivering more than 59 million litres of alternate water to vulnerable customers on our Priority Services Register (PSR), at our bottled water stations and directly into our network using our new tankers.

Following an independent external review into these incidents, we have fast-tracked critical engineering works to boost immediate resilience:

• Pembury WTW: Installed two new filters to improve water quality and network support.
• Tonbridge WTW: Recommissioned the site with three new carbon filters, adding 1.5 million litres of water a day back to the network.
• Bewl to Cottage Hill: Completed a vital 12km pipeline to better balance supplies across Sussex and Kent.
• Community readiness: Developed bespoke alternative water plans with local authorities, launched a real-time bottled water tracking app, and created an agricultural livestock register.

Looking to the future, we successfully secured an additional £100 million in resilience funding following an appeal to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) at the PR24 price review. This forms part of the largest investment programme in our history which will see us invest £1.9 billion by 2030, almost double the investment for the previous five-year period, to upgrade our treatment capacity, enhance network connectivity, and progress plans for the new Broad Oak reservoir near Canterbury.

We recognise that the scale of this investment has necessitated an average bill rise of seven percent from April 2026. Because this is a difficult time for many, we have also expanded our social tariff thresholds, currently supporting 78,664 households with discounted bills, that’s an increase of more than eight per cent..

To oversee this critical period of change, we are undergoing a change in leadership. Following mutual agreement on the need for new oversight, Chris Train OBE stepped down as Chair in May 2026, with Lisa Clement stepping in as Interim Independent Chair. Additionally, I have announced my intention to step down as CEO during the summer of 2026, after 32 years with the business, once an orderly transition is completed. I have decided to leave South East Water to ensure my position does not become a distraction from our primary focus: delivering a resilient water supply.

To anchor our future, we have launched Project Lighthouse, a company-wide transformation plan built on four pillars: secure and resilient water, rebuilding customer trust, fostering a high-performing and accountable culture, and driving operational excellence. We have already expanded our Executive team with specialists in technology, transformation, and investment delivery to accelerate these changes.

We have a clear investment plan, a strengthened leadership team, and a dedicated workforce entirely focused on improving our service to you and regaining your confidence. Thank you for your patience and cooperation as we significantly invest to build a modern, resilient water network you can rely on for generations to come.