South East Water has been fined £22 million for repeated supply failures, watchdog Ofwat has announced. The fine relates to the water company's supply interruptions in Kent and Sussex between 2020 and 2023, which affected more than 286,000 people.

The firm is also being probed for outages over the last four months.

Chris Walters, interim CEO at Ofwat, said: "South East Water's significant failings caused major disruption and had a huge impact on thousands of its customers.

"Not only did the company fail in its duty to provide a water supply to meet the demands of its customers, but it also fell short when it came to providing support for customers who lost their supply. They must do better.

"This investigation gets to the heart of the company's supply resilience problems. We want to see South East Water take more responsibility and get on with fixing things for its customers."

Ofwat said company failures have left it unable to cope during periods of high demand or extreme weather, leaving customers without tap water, unable to shower or bathe, or flush their toilets.

The watchdog recently launched an investigation into the water company after repeated outages between November and January left tens of thousands of households and businesses across Kent and Sussex without drinking water.

The water firm is to raise prices by an average of 7% from April.