The chief executive of South East Water, David Hinton, has announced he will forgo his performance bonus for 2025–2026 following severe supply outages that left thousands of customers in Kent and Sussex (counties in south-east England) without tap water for extended periods over the winter. Appearing before a UK parliamentary committee, Hinton apologised for the disruptions and acknowledged the company had failed its customers, while the chief inspector of the Drinking Water Inspectorate described the firm's crisis response as "probably one of the worst" he had encountered. The outages have badly eroded public trust — a survey found that 54% of affected residents in Tunbridge Wells are now stockpiling bottled water, with nearly one in five drinking exclusively from bottles rather than the tap.