Multi million pound fine for Southern Water
March 5, 2008
According to a recent report Southern Water has been fined millions of pounds by the water regulator Ofwat as a result of provision of poor service and failure to provide accurate information. The water giant was accused of mis-representing information to the water authorities and providing poor service. The £20 million fine will be passed on to shareholders and not to customers according to officials from Ofwat.
After the fine was announced an official from the water regulator 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.’
A senior official from Southern Water said: ‘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 also stated: ‘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.’
According to Ofwat officials Southern Water, which has nearly two million customers, gave false information relating to its customer service levels prior to October 2005, mis-represented information to make its performance look better, and failed to make compensation payments to customers over complaints about poor service.
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