South East Water's chief executive and chair have both resigned. The company still has no credible plan. The government response follows the EFRA Committee's report, Failures at South East Water, published in May, which concluded MPs had lost confidence in the company's leadership after repeated service failures culminated in a prolonged disruption affecting thousands of customers in Tunbridge Wells during late 2025 and further outages in early 2026. The report led to the resignation of South East Water's Chair, Chris Train, along with Chief Executive David Hinton.
The government's formal response landed on July 10. In its official response, the Government said it was 'grateful' for the Committee's scrutiny and agreed that South East Water's performance had fallen well below the standards customers should expect. The written response from Defra Minister Emma Hardy stopped well short of any enforcement action or structural intervention.
The government's response states: 'South East Water's performance is clearly below the standard that customers and Government are entitled to expect. Repeated disruption to supply, weaknesses in operational resilience and the company's ongoing regulatory breaches point to serious and unacceptable failings. The company is funded to deliver the necessary improvements, and it must now show credible leadership, a robust plan and early evidence of delivery.'
EFRA Committee Chair Alistair Carmichael was blunter. In a single statement he said: 'Our scrutiny of South East Water goes to show that where we see evidence of serious or systemic failure in the drinking water sector, we will be ready to hold bosses to account. However, it is a poor indictment of the system that it falls to a parliamentary select committee to ensure that the sector makes better decisions. We look forward to the Government bringing forward its Clean Water Bill and kicking the tyres on Defra's plans to get a grip of this deeply troubled sector.'
The Committee's scrutiny came after a two-week drinking water outage in Tunbridge Wells in November and December 2025, and further outages in January across parts of Kent and Sussex. South East Water remains under investigation by regulators following the supply failures, with the company's resilience, operational performance and governance continuing to face close scrutiny.
Carmichael had previously warned, on the day CEO David Hinton's resignation was announced: 'As we have seen over the last eight years, this is a company that has never been far from serious failure, so competent leadership is urgently needed. The company must ensure it learns from the investigation by the Drinking Water Inspectorate so that totally avoidable incidents like the two-week Tunbridge Wells outage of last year are never repeated.'
South East Water itself said, when the EFRA report was published, that the board and outgoing Chair Chris Train had 'mutually agreed that new independent board leadership is now required to oversee a critical period of positive, transformative change for the company, its customers, and local communities.' The company did not dispute the report's findings in its statement.
Carmichael's committee is now waiting on the government's Clean Water Bill. No timetable for that legislation has been confirmed.