If you’ve ever had any beef with Southern Water, you might be interested to hear that they are about to be fined £20.3m, yes, that’s over twenty million quid, for misleading the regulator Ofwat when reporting their customer service performance figures.
Ofwat, regulator for the water industry have whacked on this fine after a two year investigation which was sparked by changes to the billing system back in 2005.
Here’s what the Ofwat head honcho, Regina Finn had to say “Southern Water deliberately misreported its customer service performance to Ofwat and systematically manipulated information to conceal the company’s true performance over an extended period of time.”
“The company benefited directly from this misreporting at the last two price reviews, meaning Southern was able to increase its prices by more than it should have done. Customers received higher than necessary bills because of the company’s deception.”
If you’re worrying that the fine will affect your water bill next year, fear not, the Southern Water shareholders will bear the entire cost of the fine.
Southern Water Chief Executive, Les Dawson gushed “I understand Ofwat’s intention to fine us for what happened in the past. Today, I would like to reassure customers that those historically entitled to guaranteed standards payments have now been paid and that we are well on course to meeting a service improvement plan agreed with the regulator.” [For clarity to those of you who sometimes take what we write without a pinch of salt, comedian Les Dawson has not risen from the grave to head Southern Water – it’s just a bit of fun]
