South East Water Exposed: Rising Executive Pay, Foreign Ownership, and Repeated Outages — The Leaks, the Lies, and the Bills (2023–2025)

When the Prime Minister is being dragged into a local water outage and calling it “shocking” in Parliament, you’re no longer talking about a minor operational hiccup — you’re staring at a regulated monopoly that has normalised failure. For the last six days, South East Water’s Pembury treatment works problem (triggered by the wrong/failed treatment chemicals) has left roughly 24,000 homes  and hundreds of businesses in and around Tunbridge Wells without normal supply, with schools and GP services disrupted, bottled-water queues becoming the temporary “infrastructure”, and the Drinking Water Inspectorate stepping in to investigate while Defra publicly branded the disruption “unacceptable”.  And the most damning detail is this: South East Water can’t credibly sell this as a one-off blip, because regulators were already investigating its supply resilience after repeated failures — a formal Ofwat probe began back in November 2023. With that context, the question isn’t “how did this happen?” so much as “why has the system — corporate, financial and regulatory — allowed it to keep happening?”, which is exactly where ownership, incentives, investment choices and executive reward come in.

Ownership and Control

South East Water Ltd is privately owned. Its ultimate parent company is HDF (UK) Holdings Ltd, held by a consortium of infrastructure investors. In practice the company is majority‑owned by the Australian Utilities Trust of Australia (UTA) fund, with NatWest Group’s pension fund and a Canadian pension/infrastructure group (linked to Desjardins/CDPQ) each holding significant stakes. In short, South East Water’s owners are foreign investment funds (Australian and Canadian) along with NatWest’s pension scheme. (For customers this means strategic decisions are made by these outside funds, not by a UK public owner.)

Operational Failures (2023–25)

South East Water’s service performance deteriorated sharply in this period. In mid-2023 a record summer heatwave drove demand through the roof and triggered crises. By June 2023 around 6,000 households in Kent were left without any water for up to a week. Bottled water stations ran out and schools briefly closed. The company’s own accounts show it was forced into an emergency hosepipe ban on 26 June 2023 after “record demand” during hot weather. Local MPs and newspapers denounced the failures – one MP said customers had “been left with little or no water” amid “appalling” outages. By November 2023 Ofwat announced an investigation into South East Water’s supply resilience after the demand surges.

More recently, in December 2025 nearly 18,000 homes in Tunbridge Wells were cut off for days when a treatment works was forced offline after the wrong chemicals were added. Bottled water was again distributed and even pets were given water; one local MP called for the CEO to resign over “three days of water chaos”. Such events – hundreds of leaks and bursts in drought and then a major contamination incident – highlight the severity of SEW’s operational failures in 2023–25. Each emergency led to tens of thousands of people losing supply (or facing restrictions), bottled-water deliveries, and large inconvenience.

Leakage: South East Water also struggled with very high leakages (water lost from pipes). Company performance data show actual leakage running at double the targeted level. For 2023/24, SEW reported leakage of 101.4 Ml/day (million litres per day) – far above its 80 Ml/day target (it only narrowly avoided its penalty threshold). In 2024/25 the situation worsened: post-adjustment leakage was 104.8 Ml/d against a target of 81 Ml/d That 2024/25 number is 36% above target, and caused the three‐year rolling average to rise to 102.1 Ml/d (baseline was 97.4 Ml/d). In plain English, SEW was losing over 100 million litres a day through leaks – almost half as much again as allowed. (For comparison: supplying all its customers uses only ~540 Ml/day on average.) The company blames part of the increase on extreme events (a hot 2023 summer surge and a cold snap in January 2025), but managers also acknowledge the levels “were not where we had aimed to be” by 2025.

Overall, the data show clear failures: many large outages and persistently high leaks. In plain terms, customers saw unreliable service in hot weather, frequent bursts in cold weather, and hours of no water in between – even as the company admitted it was failing to meet its own leakage targets

Directors’ Pay (2020/21–2024/25)

Executive pay at South East Water has been very high and rising, even as service problems mounted. The two (executive) directors together earned roughly the following in each year (salaries, bonuses, pensions):

• 2020/21: ~£0.77 million total

• 2021/22: ~£0.95 million.

• 2022/23: ~£0.99 million.

• 2023/24: ~£1.04 million.

• 2024/25: ~£1.08 million.

These sums include base pay and bonuses (the highest paid director earned £405k in 2024 and £448k in 2025). The trend has been upward: in early 2020s exec pay was on the order of £0.8m/year and has risen above £1m by 2023/24. 

Chart: Total Executive Directors’ Pay per Year (2020/21–2024/25). Source: South East Water

Pay vs Service (“Dissonance”)

To customers, this pay trend looks especially stark. In 2021/22 SEW’s bosses took home large six-figure bonuses (£422k of bonuses that year) even as the company was losing water and failing customers. By 2022/23 the two executives were being paid nearly £1 million between them, just as tens of thousands of customers suffered supply cuts. Put bluntly, executives collected insultingly high pay while “leaks and outages” persisted (as one politician put it).

The disconnect extends beyond pay: South East Water paid out more in dividends and interest than it invested in infrastructure in 2020–22. Our analysis shows SEW spent £156m on dividends and £72.8m on debt interest in 2020–22, exceeding the £179.8m it spent on pipes and treatment plants. In other words, shareholders were paid at least as much as was poured into fixing the network. Customers note that underinvestment in maintenance likely drove the leaks and bursts they suffered.

We highlight this because (even aside from absolute pay levels) company defense of high pay rings hollow when service is bad. In plain terms: why pay bosses more bonuses when half the county is under hosepipe ban? The gap between sky-high executive earnings and customers’ poor service has been a constant source of outrage.

Customer Impact, Complaints and Regulation

The operational failures have hurt customers deeply. Satisfaction surveys and complaint statistics both reflect this. In 2023/24 South East Water’s customer service rating fell below the industry median: its combined customer experience score (C-MeX) was 70.8 (median is 76.5). Likewise its formal customer complaint rate was extremely high – around 50–58 complaints per 10,000 households in 2022/23–2023/24. (For context, the Water Regulator’s median is typically around 10–20 per 10,000.)

In plain terms, nearly one in every 200 customers complained in a year about poor service. And satisfaction polls showed many unhappy customers. The company itself admits performance targets on pressure, leaks and interruptions have been missed, triggering potential penalties. For example, in 2023/24 some key targets were missed badly (it even notes it “failed” two out of nine performance commitments). Ofwat, the industry regulator, launched an investigation into SEW’s resilience and customer service in late 2023. In effect, regulators concluded the company may be failing to deliver adequate service quality.

All this adds up to a heavy impact on ordinary people: discolored water, sudden no-supply notices, and low pressure became common complaints (as local media reported). Many households had water cuts or boiled water advisories in 2023–25. Customer advocacy groups and even MPs have demanded action, pointing out that people are paying bills yet not getting reliable water. Ofwat has already fined or is investigating South East Water over these issues (it was fined £3.2m in Oct 2022 for unrelated breaches, and is now looking at water shortages and supply interruptions in 2023).

Climate, Weather and Investment Context

South East Water cites climate and weather factors to partly explain the issues. The company acknowledges that both an exceptionally hot, dry summer of 2023 and a flash freeze in Jan 2025 contributed to spikes in leaks. In 2024/25 they even noted a cold snap in January caused a temporary “breakout” of leaks across the South East. In plain-English: pipes cracked when the ground froze after drought-soaked soil shifted. However, every UK water company faces those same conditions; SEW’s response appears to have lagged.

On climate, the company publicly recognizes the risks of drought and flooding: it has a Thames‐like “resilience” plan involving new reservoirs and main enhancements. It has committed billions in long-term investment – for example a new £39 million treatment plant in Kent and a £12 million main to boost resilience. But these plans were already in place (announced in AMP7/8), not a reaction to 2025’s crisis. Critics note that during 2020–25 SEW’s shareholders often preferred payouts to upgrades (as seen above). In fact, the company’s own leakage page reveals a huge gap: its target was to cut leaks 15% by 2025, but instead leaks climbed 7% above baseline.

Its own reporting on operational carbon intensity also jars with the rhetoric — the chart below shows its targets versus actual emissions intensity.

Plainly, environmental factors made a bad situation worse, but SEW’s infrastructure and maintenance lagged behind. They have ramped up leak-fixing crews (20% more leaks fixed in 2024/25) and plan new technology for the future. They also spend about £35 million per year on leakage repairs. However, by 2025 it was clear that despite these efforts the network remained fragile. Customers rightly ask why, during extreme weather and rising demand, the pipes could not hold up. The company acknowledges it fell short of its own goals but maintains “we are working to improve” leakage and supply.

Conclusion: Accountability and Clarity

In summary, between 2020 and 2025 South East Water has faced repeated crises. Investigations by Ofwat and public scrutiny have highlighted ownership, pay and investment choices as root issues. The owners – foreign infrastructure funds – have prioritized financial returns, evidenced by large dividends and borrowing, even as the network deteriorated. Executives have been richly rewarded while customers endured outages and water loss.

We have provided clear figures and charts to lay out these facts. All charts use company data (cited as “Source: South East Water”) so readers can see the basis. The narrative avoids jargon: for example, when we say “leakage” we mean treated water lost from pipes (millions of litres per day); “C-MeX” is just a customer satisfaction score, etc. By looking at the data in context, it is clear that South East Water’s executive pay has risen even as service performance fell short of reasonable standards.

The Shepway Vox Team

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