Southern Water - The Company that just keeps taking
How has Southern Water evolved into what many regard as a modern day ‘robber baron’?
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The answer lies in its many years of persistent negligent and/or intentional discharges of raw sewage into waterways and coastal areas, for which it has been prosecuted, convicted and heavily fined. By 2024, for its environmental crimes Southern had been fined a total of more than £216m, plus an Ofwat penalty of £31.9m. In one case alone in 2021, Southern was fined £90m for what the judge, Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson, described as “deliberate” pollution over years and “a disregard for the law from the top down.”
He also noted that Southern’s finances were “labyrinthine”, implying that its financial affairs were so hard to penetrate and so opaque as to suggest a deliberate attempt to hide financial irregularities. Whether true or not, why would any honest company manage their affairs in such a way that it invites such commentary from a judge?
Somehow, Southern has had to find ways to finance the colossal costs of remedying all that enviro damage it caused and prevent it happening again. Cue the ‘polluter pays’ principle. But, who were the polluters? It certainly was not Southern’s customers!
Customers did not know of, approve of, agree to, or participate in, any of Southern Water’s pollution decisions or actions for which it has been criminally convicted, nor in its lack of transparency.
