Southern Water gets fined millions
February 20, 2008
Officials from the UK’s water regulator, Ofwat, have reported that Southern Water has been fined over £20 million for mis-reporting information and providing poor service. The cost of the fine will not be passed on to customers, state Ofwat officials, but will be passed on directly to shareholders. The total fine that the water supplier has been hit with comes to £20.3 million.
Ofwat officials claims that the water supplier fudged data to make it look as thought it was performing better than it was, and the fines have now been accepted by the water company. Southern Water provides water services to nearly two million customers. According to reports the company manipulated data relating to its customers service levels prior to October 2005, and failed to make compulsory £25 payments to customers over issues relating to poor service.
A senior official from Ofwat stated: ‘Southern Water behaved unacceptably in deliberately misreporting customer service performance to Ofwat and systematically manipulating information to conceal its true performance over an extended period of time and the company has acknowledged this.’
The Chief Executive of Southern Water stated: ‘Today’s announcement draws a line under a shameful period in the company’s history when an area of the business was deceiving our customers and the regulator. The new management team has put procedures into place to ensure this will never happen again and once again we apologise to our customers.’ He added: ‘I can also assure them that the fine will be borne by the company’s current shareholders even though neither they, nor our previous owners, knew of the deception that took place before the company’s present management team was appointed.’
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