Southern Water

Water companies owe billpayers £236 million for underperformance

Weekend Press: Energy efficiency taskforce axed after four meetings

In our latest round-up of the weekend’s national news coverage, the government’s energy efficiency taskforce, charged with reducing the UK’s energy use by 15% by 2030, has been scrapped after just six months and four meetings. Elsewhere, the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) alleges that consumers have effectively overpaid hundreds of millions of pounds for the Moray East wind farm in north-east Scotland, Southern Water faces legal action over floods and Bill Gates raises concerns that his nuclear firm is to be snubbed in the UK modular reactor race.

PR24 needs more focus on people, says Southern boss

Where will England’s next reservoirs be?

Helm: Breaking up Thames would be a good start

Economist Dieter Helm has proposed dividing beleaguered Thames into two public limited companies with simplified ownership to improve management and prevent financial engineering. The sector's long-term critic also took Ofwat to task for not taking steps to strip poorly-performing companies of their licences and proposed reverting to the single-company structures of the original privatised companies.

Unacceptable quality blamed for Southern Water outages

Southern redesigns wastewater site to slash spills

Macquarie injects further £550m into Southern

Southern Water's majority stakeholder Macquarie has invested an extra £550 million into the company to keep up momentum in its turnaround plan. It said impacts from the current economic environment had put extra pressure on business costs so the money will allow Southern to continue making improvements on tackling sewer overflows and bolstering resilience

Water firms urged to step up emissions ambitions for PR24

Ofwat approves £2.2bn accelerated spending

Southern: Bill hikes require visible performance improvement

The only way to stop public anger at bill rises is through visible and sustained performance improvement in areas that matter most to customers, Southern Water has told Utility Week. It comes after the company faced a public and media backlash to leaked proposals to raise bills by as much as 73% to fund future investment needs.

Dry weather pushes water demand up 20% in South East

River Thames CSO upgrades to be delivered 10 years early

More than £100bn needed to tackle drainage issues

Water firms failed to supply bottles to thousands during freeze

Two water companies failed to adequately supply bottled water to thousands of customers cut off during freeze thaw events over the winter. Ofwat has told South East and Southern Water that they must “make significant improvements” to their emergency response procedures after supply failures in December 2022. The regulator’s order comes following an investigation into the freeze thaw events which affected all regions last winter.