Southern Water is a private water company in England, with shareholders primarily based in Australia. They are regulated by Ofwat and the Environmental Agency.

Southern Water have outranked their competitive partners and been crowned the worst of the worst when looking at their annual number of pollution incidents from sewerage assets. This year they had a staggering total of 358 incidents. Unsurprisingly, they once again received a poor ‘red‘ rating on their Environmental Performance Assessment (EPA) for this.

In 2021 they were fined a record breaking £90 million for widespread pollution, after pleading guilty to 6,971 unpermitted sewage discharges. The court were told Southern Water deliberately presented a misleading picture of compliance to the Environment Agency, hindering proper regulation of the company.