South West Water accused of putting bonuses before customers by Devon MP

South West Water is 'lagging behind' according to the industry regulator. Credit: ITV News

South West Water has been urged in Parliament to do more to protect the public from poor water quality rather than 'protecting their bonuses'.

The comments were made during a debate led by East Devon MP Simon Jupp this afternoon.

The company has been described as 'lagging behind' by regulators and received a one-star rating from the Environment Agency.

Speaking in Parliament, Mr Jupp said: "We must do all we can to protect our rivers and coastlines because all is not well with our water.

'South West Water needs to invest more in infrastructure to protect the public from poor water quality, rather than protecting their company bonuses."

Simon Jupp, East Devon MP, led the debate.

The regulator, Ofwat, says South West Water is 'lagging behind' in five key areas: customer satisfaction; interruptions to water supply; water quality; pollution incidents; and treatment works compliance.

Companies that miss their performance targets can face financial penalties, which are taken off customers' bills. This year South West Water is being docked £13.3million.

In a report last summer, Ofwat accused South West Water of 'sustained poor performance over a number of years, saying 'Their performance was terrible across the board' and they have 'continued to perform well below target for most metrics.'

Taunton MP Rebecca Pow, who is the Government's environment minister, said: "I make absolutely no secret in my disappointment with the poor performance of South West Water and the impact it has had on the environment.

"It's very serious. I have met with the CEOs of all of our poor-performance water companies, but I had a very specific meeting with the CEO of South West Water in January and I made it clear we need to see rapid improvement in their performance."

Environment Minister Rebecca Pow says she is very concerned by the company's perfomance.

A South West Water spokesperson said: “We welcome today’s balanced debate. As mentioned in the debate, we have already delivered 80% of our Operational Delivery Metrics (ODI) as part of our commitments to Ofwat.

We have now installed monitoring on 100% of our storm overflows, enabling us to target our investment and interventions to reduce spill numbers.

Also mentioned in the debate, we will soon launch WaterFit Live, providing customers and communities with near real-time data on the performance of our network at designated bathing beaches – far in advance of the government-mandated 2025 deadline.

We are proud to say that 1 in 14 households across the South West are now shareholders thanks to our pioneering WaterShare+ scheme.

We are investing further and faster than ever before to deliver major improvements in the region’s water resources and wastewater infrastructure for the future. We will continue to work closely and liaise with our regulators, Defra and the MPs in our region, whilst engaging with our customers and communities.”