The chief executive of South East Water has stepped down, a week after his chairman left, amid condemnation of the firm’s handling of supply outages
The boss of bungling South East Water has quit after MPs said they had no confidence in the firm’s leadership following supply outages.
The firm said David Hinton had decided to step down but will remain in post “to allow an orderly transition over the summer period”.
It added: “He feels his position has become an increasing distraction from South East Water’s most important priority, which is to deliver a resilient water supply for its customers.”
His departure comes after its chairman, Chris Train, resigned last week following a scathing report by MPs, who said they had “no confidence” in the company’s leadership.
Bosses at South East Water were grilled twice by MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) Committee over their response to multiple supply interruptions across Kent and Sussex.
It came after customers in Tunbridge Wells in Kent suffered outages in November and December. Then thousands of properties in Kent and Sussex had their supply disrupted for days in January. At the time, South East Water blamed the problems on Storm Goretti causing burst pipes and power cuts.
Mr Train, appearing before the committee last month, admitted: “(The company) failed on the basic objective of delivering water to customers and therefore that is a failure and we recognise that failure. We failed our customers.”
South East Water is facing a £22million fine for leaving hundreds of thousands of people without supplies. Regulator Ofwat announced in eary March it planned to fine the utility firm over supply failures between 2020 and 2023, impacting more than 286,000 people. Homes in Kent and Sussex were hit by multiple interruptions, leaving customers with no tap water and unable to flush toilets.
It emerged Mr Hinton was in line for a £400,000 bonus. He pocketed a 30% pay rise last year when customers’ bills leaped by 20%.
Sophie Conquest, lead campaigner at the group We Own It, said: “The public has lost confidence in South East Water to run our water for the public good, rather than just their own profits.
“While it is gratifying to see this resignation, what we need is not the resignation of individual managers or board members, but a new way forward.
“The resignation of the CEO does not deal with the fact that the company’s shareholders are gorging the company full of debt and extracting extortionate interest rates.
“We need to run our water the way 90% of the world runs water, in public ownership. The government should step in and withdraw South East Water’s operating licence.”
