Water bill hike: customers are being asked to “foot the bill” for water company failure

EMBARGO: 00:01 Thursday 29th January 2026

Responding to the announcement of water bill rises in April 2026, Liberal Democrat Environment spokesperson Tim Farron MP said:

“It is an absolute insult to ask families to cough up even more money during a cost-of-living crisis, while our rivers remain treated like open sewers and customers sometimes have no water coming out of the taps at all. Households shouldn’t have to foot the bill for the failures of private water companies to clean up the mess they themselves created.

“The Government’s timid reforms do not rise to the scale of the challenge. We don't need more tinkering, we need a total structural overhaul.

“Liberal Democrats have called for Ofwat to be scrapped and replaced with a powerful new regulator with the teeth to put the environment and customers first. We must move to a mutual ownership model that ensures money is invested into our infrastructure, not padding the pockets of shareholders.”

South East Water customers will see bills rise by 7% from April, despite a series of water outages over recent months. Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells, Mike Martin, added:

“Yet again, customers are paying the price for years of underinvestment in our water network while hundreds of millions of pounds in cash continues to be rinsed from South East Water by its shareholders”.

"The Government proposed reforms do nothing to address the £70 billion in debt held by water companies across this country. At the height of Tunbridge Wells' water outage, South East Water was paying £3,000 an hour in debt interest to shareholders. I've taken this directly to the owners and shareholders. The Government needs to as well."

ENDS