South East Water Exposed: 14 Bewl Waters Lost to Leaks (2012–2025), Dividends Paid, Outages Mount, Regulators Investigate

“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” W.H Auden

In Kent and Sussex, fresh water – a most precious commodity, is now a kind of performance art: invisible when you need it, plentiful when it’s escaping underground, and always—always—accompanied by soothing corporate language about “resilience” delivered in the tone of a man explaining that the Titanic is technically still a boat.

Let’s begin with the basic awkwardness. South East Water (SEW) operates in “one of the most water-stressed areas in the country” (their words, not ours). Yet, across 2012/13–2024/25, Ofwat’s long-term performance data shows SEW still losing around the equivalent of an entire Bewl Water reservoir to leakage roughly every year—sometimes more. Bewl Water holds about 31,000 megalitres (Ml). A megalitre (Ml) is a unit of volume equal to one million litres of water (1,000 cubic metres).

So if you’re a customer wondering why, in a region where drought restrictions are not a quirky lifestyle choice but a recurring policy tool, your supply can vanish after a cold snap or a hot week… yes. This is why.

And now, like Sir Humphrey with a clipboard and a grin: “It would be extremely courageous, Minister, to prioritise fixing the pipes over ensuring the money continues its natural migration—upwards.”

Leakage: the region’s most reliable “river”

SEW’s leakage story has two acts: years of modest progress, followed by an ugly reversal that coincides unhelpfully with a period when customers increasingly found themselves starring in The Great British Queue For Bottled Water.

Ofwat’s long-term leakage dataset (measured in Ml/day, million litres per day) records SEW at 93.2 Ml/day in 2012/13, falling to a best point of 88.1–88.7 Ml/day in the mid-late 2010s/early 2020s—before climbing sharply again.

SEW’s own more recent narrative is less flattering in numbers and more comforting in tone. For 2024/25, SEW states its “leakage rate of 104.8 million litres a day, against our target of … 81 million litres a day.”

That gap is not a rounding error. It is a second, invisible water company operating under the first one.

Leakage, in plain English: per day, per month, per year

Using Ofwat’s Ml/day figures, here’s what that means for ordinary humans who think in months and years. (Monthly is calculated using ~30.44 days; annual uses 365.)

Total leakage across 2012/13–2024/25: 448,950 Ml per year-equivalent (i.e., 448.95 billion litres). That is about 14.5 Bewl Water reservoirs.

Put another way, SEW’s estimated 14.5 Bewl Waters of leaked treated water (about 449 billion litres) is enough to give every person in the UK roughly  1,400 UK gallons each. Spread across normal household use rates (roughly 135–150 litres per person per day), that’s around six to seven weeks’ water per person — a month and a half of everyday drinking, washing and cooking, effectively poured into the ground.

If you only look at the most recent four-year block (2021/22–2024/25), the total is about 4.7 Bewl Waters—still appalling, just over a shorter window.

“Water-stressed area”, meet “leakage-stressed customers”

This matters more in Kent and Sussex than almost anywhere because the wider South East is formally recognised as water-stressed. Government classification work on water stress exists precisely because parts of England face structural scarcity pressures. And SEW itself explicitly frames the region as water-stressed (again: not us, them).

In other words: this isn’t a place where you can shrug off a decade of leakage as “unfortunate but manageable”. In a water-stressed region, persistent leakage is not just waste; it is strategic self-harm with a corporate comms team.

Outages and hosepipe bans: the public-facing symptoms

Leakage is the slow bleed. Outages are the arterial spray across your kitchen tiles.

2012 drought: hosepipe bans as official summer décor

During the 2012 drought, hosepipe bans were imposed across parts of the South East—an early signal that scarcity would be a recurring theme, not a one-off.

2022: hosepipe bans return—because of course they do

In August 2022, SEW announced a hosepipe ban covering Kent and Sussex amid extreme dry conditions and record demand.

December 2022 freeze-thaw: the “Christmas without water” episode

In late 2022, thousands faced the prospect of Christmas without running water after a freeze-thaw event and burst pipes. The Guardian reported that SEW “admitted that it could not guarantee” all customers would be restored by Christmas weekend.

Ofwat correspondence later referred to significant incidents including a freeze-thaw event, demanding urgent board-level engagement.

June 2023: supply interruptions—and Ofwat drags the board in

In June 2023, Ofwat’s CEO wrote directly to SEW’s CEO requesting an urgent meeting after “re-occurring supply interruptions” and “two significant supply incidents … within a short period of time”.

Summer 2023: hosepipe ban again

SEW introduced a hosepipe ban from 26 June 2023, widely reported as pressure on supplies intensified.

Late 2025 into 2026: Tunbridge Wells, Kent & Sussex—then the regulators arrive with clipboards and flamethrowers

Public reporting describes a major Tunbridge Wells disruption beginning late Nov early Dec 2025, affecting around 24,000 homes, linked to problems at the Pembury treatment works.

Then came the wider Kent & Sussex supply failures in January 2026, with 30,000 thousand properties affected and a major incident declared in reporting.

The “four investigations” problem: regulators finally reach for the big red button

SEW’s current predicament is no longer simply “bad headlines”. It is now—by the regulators’ own published actions—multiple live investigations running in parallel:

Ofwat (1): Supply resilience enforcement case (opened Nov 2023).
Ofwat opened an enforcement case into SEW’s supply resilience to investigate whether it “failed to develop and maintain an efficient water supply system”.

Ofwat (2): Customer-focused licence condition investigation (opened 15 Jan 2026).
Ofwat has opened a new investigation into whether SEW complied with obligations to provide “high standards of customer service and support” during repeated outages. It is also the first investigation Ofwat has launched under this customer-focused licence condition.
If Ofwat ultimately finds a breach, it has powers including significant financial penalties (commonly described as up to 10% of turnover in reporting and commentary).

Drinking Water Inspectorate (1): Tunbridge Wells disruption before Christmas 2025.
Local authority updates confirm that the Inspectorate commenced investigation activity in relation to the incidents and communications to consumers.

Drinking Water Inspectorate (2): Kent & Sussex loss of supply (Jan 2026).
The DWI’s own statement says it “has commenced an investigation” into the loss of supply incidents and will consider circumstances leading up to the event, the company’s actions, and communications with consumers.

Here’s the grim comedy: none of these investigations rehydrates your kettle this week. But they do change the direction of travel—because the regulators are now formally asking whether this is not just unfortunate performance, but potentially non-compliance with legal and licence obligations.

Dividends: money that moved faster than the pipes

Now we reach the part of the story where water stops moving and cash starts sprinting.

From SEW’s accounts, dividends were paid repeatedly across the earlier part of the period—for example £32.0m (2012/13), £31.0m (2013/14), £30.0m (2014/15), and £27.144m (2015/16).

Subsequent years show continued payouts (£16.0m in 2016/17, £18.0m in 2017/18, £28.0m in 2018/19).

Then came the year SEW discovered the “special dividend” button.

In the 2020/21 regulatory accounts, the company states—

“Dividends in the year totalled £147.0 million (2020: £11.0 million) including an ordinary dividend of £11.0 million (2020: £11.0 million) and a special restructuring dividend of £136.0 million (2020: £nil).”

After that, dividends reduced sharply. And in the most recent year covered here, SEW’s accounts states:

“No dividends were paid during the year ended 31 March 2025 (2024: £2.3 million).” 

Strip out the one-off £136.0m special dividend and the remaining “ordinary-ish” dividends across 2012/13–2024/25 still total roughly £224.4m (based on the annual figures cited above).

If you’re a customer reading that during a supply crisis, you may feel the urge to conduct your own “special restructuring” of the executive inbox.

CEO pay: the tap that never runs dry

Here’s what SEW discloses in the recent years where the reporting is consistent and easily comparable.

For CEO David Hinton – pictured, SEW’s regulatory accounts show (total pay and benefits):

• £417,483 (2021/22) 

• £405,433 (2022/23) 

• £440,472 (2023/24) 

• £457,534 (2024/25) 

In 2024/25, the accounts break out a base salary of £307,274 for the CEO in that year’s reporting. 

Now, to be legally boring (because we like being sued even less than we like being thirsty): high pay is not, by itself, wrongdoing. But it becomes editorially combustible when paired with repeated service failures, a water-stressed region, major incidents, and four concurrent regulatory investigations.

“Performance overall”: the regulator paper trail says the quiet part out loud

Two documents matter because they show how the regulator’s patience has been wearing thin in real time.

First, Ofwat’s June 2023 letter to the CEO is not a casual note; it is the regulator formally hauling the board into an urgent meeting after repeated supply interruptions.

Second, the November 2023 enforcement case is Ofwat opening a formal investigation into supply resilience—explicitly linked to SEW’s performance over the previous 18 months.

When you add January 2026’s customer-focused licence investigation on top, it becomes painfully obvious that this is no longer “a bad patch”. It is a pattern, now being tested against legal and licence duties.

So what does it mean for customers?

This is the moment where commentators sometimes say, “fines just get passed onto customers.” That can be true in some ways, but it can also become an excuse for doing nothing, which is just a longer sentence for “the next outage is already being scheduled by the laws of physics.”

There is at least one other pathway: regulators can require targeted spending and enforce specific improvements—keeping money in the network rather than simply removing it as punishment. That’s not a promise; it’s a known regulatory approach in principle, and the very fact Ofwat’s enforcement case focuses on whether SEW has maintained an “efficient water supply system” tells you where the argument is heading.

Meanwhile, SEW itself says the South East needs “new treatment plants, storage reservoirs and pipes” because the region is water-stressed.
The editorial point is brutal and simple: if the region is that stressed, the network cannot keep behaving like a sieve and then acting surprised when customers notice the floor is wet.

Conclusion: a leaky business model in a dry county

Across 2012/13–2024/25, Ofwat data shows leakage averaging in the high-80s to low-100s Ml/day, amounting to roughly 14.5 Bewl Waters of treated water lost.

During broadly the same era, dividends flowed—sometimes spectacularly—including a £136.0m special dividend in 2020/21 that SEW discloses explicitly in its accounts.

CEO pay in recent years sits in the £400k–£458k range by SEW’s own reporting.

And now, after repeated major supply failures, SEW faces two Ofwat investigations (supply resilience + customer-focused licence condition) and two DWI investigations (Tunbridge Wells + Kent/Sussex loss of supply).

If you want the Yes Minister translation, it goes like this:

Jim Hacker: “People don’t have water.”
Sir Humphrey: “A regrettable communications opportunity, Minister.”
Bernard: “They’re boiling rainwater to flush toilets.”
Sir Humphrey: “An encouraging sign of public engagement.”

Kent and Sussex are not just dealing with inconvenience. They are living in a water-stressed region being served by a system that, by the numbers, has been leaking at reservoir-scale for over a decade.

The hard part isn’t finding the problem. The hard part is making sure the solution isn’t yet another “special restructuring”—this time of customer expectations and at their expense again.

The Shepway Vox Team

No water, no life.  No blue, no green.  Sylvia Earle

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