South East Water's chief executive David Hinton has made a frank admission of failure before MPs, conceding he "got it wrong" in his management of recent water supply outages that affected thousands of homes across Kent and Sussex.
Grilling by Parliamentary Committee
Company executives faced intense questioning from the parliamentary Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on Tuesday, with members scrutinising their handling of multiple supply disruptions that left residents without drinking water for days.
The problems began with a prolonged outage in Tunbridge Wells during November and December, followed by widespread supply cuts across Kent and Sussex in January that forced school closures and left households unable to shower, bathe or flush toilets.
Communication Failures Acknowledged
Mr Hinton, who had faced criticism for declining interviews and poor communication during the crisis, told MPs: "I got it wrong, and that's very much a lesson that we've learned into the playbook of how we handle future events."
The company has since engaged consultants to develop a crisis communications "playbook" as part of what Mr Hinton described as a transformation process to learn from their mistakes.
Catalogue of Errors Revealed
During his second appearance before the committee, Mr Hinton acknowledged multiple failures including:
- Insufficient early identification of infrastructure problems
- Inadequate routine maintenance procedures
- A "reactive culture" in dealing with emerging issues
- Slow response to early warning signals in November
This represented a significant shift from his January testimony, where he had described problems at the Pembury Water Treatment Works as "unexpected" despite the Drinking Water Inspectorate stating they "should not have been a surprise."
Vulnerable Customers Let Down
The committee heard that while South East Water delivered nearly 35,000 bottles of water to vulnerable customers during the crisis, 70 deliveries were missed. Mr Hinton described this performance as "disappointing" and emotionally stated: "It absolutely breaks all our hearts when we can't do that properly."
Leadership Questions Persist
SEW chairman Chris Train acknowledged to MPs that the company "failed on the basic objective of delivering water to customers" but defended the current leadership team despite pressure from committee members.
Mr Train revealed that Mr Hinton, who commands a £400,000 salary, has waived any potential bonus this year. However, MPs repeatedly questioned why there had been no leadership changes given the scale of failures and criticism from the Prime Minister, shareholders, customers and various public bodies.
Regulatory Scrutiny Continues
The hearing follows Ofwat's announcement in March that it intends to fine South East Water £22 million over water supply failures between 2020 and 2023 that affected more than 286,000 people - the second-largest penalty ever proposed by the regulator.
Ofwat chief executive Chris Walters, who also appeared before the committee, noted that the regulator is seeing "steps forward being made" by the company since the outages and observed "a step change in the amount of responsibility" being taken.
However, he cautioned that "only time will tell" if these improvements prove sufficient, welcoming South East Water's commitment to work constructively with regulators while emphasising the need for sustained improvement.
