Households across the Isle of Wight will receive a £61 rebate from Southern Water over the next 5 years as the water company is ordered to pay a £126million penalty for serious failings and deliberate misreporting.
Ofwat – the industry regulator – has fined Southern Water £3million and ordered the utility company to repay £123million to customers after a lengthy 2-year investigation found failings relating to the management, operation and performance of Southern Water’s wastewater treatment works. Ofwat also found that Southern Water deliberately misreported data about the performance of its wastewater treatment works.
Each customer will receive a £17 rebate in 2020/21 followed by a £11 rebate per year for the following 4 years up to 2025. The payments will be made to all households, whether the occupant rents or owns and the amount may increase with inflation. Business customers will also receive a rebate, although details of the amount have not yet been announced.
Ian McAulay, Chief Executive of Southern Water, has said:
“We are profoundly sorry for these failures and have been working very hard to understand past failings and implement the changes required to ensure we better deliver for our customers and meet the standards they deserve”.
Leader of the Isle of Wight Council, Councillor Dave Stewart said:
“On behalf of our residents, visitors and our Island environment it is vital for us to be informed if wastewater sampling specific to our area was involved in this matter or not.
“We will be in contact with Southern Water and the relevant investigating parties, including Ofwat and the Environment Agency, to establish this detail. Until then it would be inappropriate to speculate.
Article continues below this advertisement “Public safety and our beautiful and delicately-balanced environment are of the utmost importance to us all, and as a council we are committed to being rigorous in their protection and defence.”
A £61 rebate over 5 years? That’s on average £1 per month!!How many times will their prices increase over this 5 year period? Im not sure how I will spend this windfall.Why don’t they just give it to a charity?
I will take it better in my pocket than theirs
I expect my rebate back to me
I will decide if it goes to some charity
Southern water do not get to decide what happens to money that is rightfully mine
What’s the betting they put the price up to cover it?
Southern Water said it was “deeply sorry” and added that the costs of the penalty would not be passed on to customers in the form of higher prices.
However,they can increase their prices with impunity,as has been proven many times before.Ofwat do not have the powers to stop them.
Quick enough to take it from us but not so quick to pay it back
It’s about time they were brought to book. Trouble is the offenders won’t be penalised. Southampton water has lot’s of brown sludge floating around and it certainly ain’t bathwater
I’ve had terrible issues with southern water, I had a leak in my pipe (or whatever the technical term might be) under the ground on public highway, given that I didn’t have my pneumatic drill on me that day and the fact that I wouldn’t know how to fix it even if I did have it handy (I don’t actually have one) I told them to revise my bill as surely they are responsible which equals unfair bill price. Still waiting for it to happen. And I’m getting reminder bills as I’m withholding payment. The customer service advisors I’ve spoken to sound as though they are reading answers off a script and the things they say don’t flow with what I’m saying. It puzzles me. But anyway yes southern water terrible.
if the leak is before your meter, then you will not have been disadvantaged and will owe what is on the bill. If the leak is between the meter and the house, then turning off everything and seeing how much the meter changes in one hour or over a short timeframe, will tell you how much you are being charged for the leak
e.g if the meter clicks up by one, when all your taps etc are off indoors, after, say an hour, then you can state to them that your reading was xxxx, then one hour later it was xxxx, which means you are being charged the difference per hour due to the leak
and that they would then owe you this much for each hour the leak had been happening.
Turn everything off in your home and then go and check your meter. If it is not moving at all, then you are not being affected by the leak and will owe them your bill.
Give it now, why should people wait bunch of bandits
A ‘rebate’ – but over six years?
So is the ‘rebate’ for continued practice of misreporting data that will continue for six years too?
And is the supposed fine payable over the same SIX years???
Well the whiff in the air is more like something beginning with ‘bul’ than it is of sewerage then. That’s for sure.
Nice of Dave Stewart to hop on to the podium. Will he be instructing his Environmental Health Officers to apologise to any businesses they might have been hounding for alleged elevated sea pollution levels now all this has come to light??
Our water would be turned off if we owed Southern Water £61 and refused to pay it.
no, it is illegal for the water supply to be turned off in the UK.
You can refuse to pay and the options for southern water are to deduct it from benefits before you get them, or take you to court and obtain an attachment of earnings order, so that the debt is taken from your wages/salary before you get it, or the debt collection agency route.
As water is essential to life, they cannot turn it off in this country.
What if you decided to move in the six years
How many people will be dead before they get all this rebate?