Southern Water CEO Lawrence Gosden takes a forward look at the company’s improvement story following the publication yesterday of performance reports by Ofwat and the Environment Agency using data from 2024 flagging up failings in the water company’s performance.

Lawrebnce Gosden discusses the two reports and what Southern Water is doing moving forwards, both behind the scenes and on the ground in communities across the region, to build on the improvements made since the company launched its Turnaround Plan in spring 2023.

Lawrence Gosden: The two reports from industry regulators published (yesterday) showcasing data from 2024 and earlier – will understandably attract attention, and they demonstrate that Southern Water is not yet meeting all its regulatory targets.

That’s true, of course; but dig a little deeper and they also show signs of real progress, stability and action – the kind of things our communities have told us they’re desperate to see.

By their very nature, regulatory targets are black and white, and we understand that. We’ve retained our 2-star EPA rating and have improved our individual scores in the majority of Ofwat metrics - but we also accept that we aren’t yet where we want to be.

Targets alone do not tell the whole story, and it’s this bigger story of steady improvement that I’d like to share with customers now as we embark on a period of exciting transformation.

In April 2023, I launched a two-year Turnaround Plan to deliver a rapid boost to performance in key areas and we oversaw:

• Overall pollution incidents cut by 30%
• Internal sewer flooding incidents down by 40%
• Drinking water quality compliance score up by 40%
• Leakage reduced by a record 18.5% last year

At the same time, we launched a £1.5 billion Clean Rivers and Seas Plan to drive down storm overflows, in line with the Government’s commitment to see them halved by 2030. Across our region, 84 per cent of bathing waters are rated Good or Excellent – that’s 20 per cent higher than the UK average.

To deliver this progress at pace, we chose to spend £1.5 billion more than the 2020–25 budget agreed with Ofwat, resulting in record capital investment. This enabled costly but critical upgrades, including a new 24/7 Control Centre and the installation of 32,000 digital sewer monitors to spot possible pollutions before they even happen.

And this was made possible by the backing of our supportive shareholder, which has injected £1.65 billion of equity since 2021 and which announced a further £655 million in the summer. No dividends have been paid to shareholders since 2017, and none are likely to be until at least 2030.

The turnaround and continued shareholder backing has set us up for a bright future, as our biggest investment plan ever gets underway for 2025-30, shaped by the feedback of thousands of customers and featuring around £8.5 billion of spending to improve environmental performance, build water supply resilience, and boost customer service standards.

My team and I are determined to drive forward the continued improvement that customers and communities in our region rightly expect of us – and we’re committed to working closely with our regulators and other key partners across the industry to achieve this.