South East Water has stressed that its PR24 business plan is “the most important and ambitious” it has ever submitted, including a near doubling of total expenditure to £1.9 billion between 2025 and 2030.
The company said this level of spend, and the resulting 19.6% increase in customers’ bills by 2030, was necessary to tackle the “unprecedented pressure that our network has been put under”.
South East’s headline bill increase sees prices rise from £19.33 a month in 2025 to £23.12 by 2030 – or £277.24 a year. However, the company warned that Ofwat’s methodology for PR24, and in particular the investment framework it sets out “may not be sufficient to attract and retain equity capital investors”.
Therefore it has also modelled bill increases on a “more realistic investment outlook”, which sees bills rise by 29% over the five years to £24.96 a month – or £299.52 per annum.
To help customers with affordability, South East plans to nearly double the number of customers on its social tariff, to a total of 104,000, while also increasing the qualifying threshold by 17%.
Among the pledges included in South East’s business plan are to reduce extreme weather related interruptions to 16.2 min from 48 min if unmitigated, at a cost of c£230 million over the AMP.
The company is planning c£12.5 million on being “operationally net zero” by 2050 but stressed that customers see net zero as a “lower priority” and so wants investment in this area to be “proportional and balanced”.
The plan includes £389 million of investment in enhancing water efficiency, reducing leaks and utilising smart meters. Meanwhile c£57.5 million will go towards investigating and removing lead pipes and developing solutions for nitrate removal.
On leakage the company is targeting a 24% reduction and a 9.1% cut in per capita consumption.
South East said it had proposed some bespoke outcome delivery incentives (ODIs) but “due to the described impact on the business plan assessment and associated penalties we have not included any bespoke PCs following the feedback from Ofwat”.