South West Water parent company takes £16m hit over Brixham water contamination

The parent company of South West Water has revealed that parasite-contaminated water found in part of Devon earlier this year cost the company £16m.

It had to implement a boil water notice when people in the Brixham area became sick after diarrhoea-causing cryptosporidium was found in a reservoir in May.

In a trading statement this morning, Pennon Group said that the cryptosporidium water quality event in Brixham this summer was an “incredibly rare event for South West Water” and that it “worked swiftly and diligently to identify the issue, clean the network, and restore full supply to all customers”.

The statement said: “With support from our colleagues and contractors working 24 hours a day, we delivered a number of interventions including cleaning and flushing the network 27 times, replacing sections of the 30km network, ‘ice pigging’, and the installation of localised crypto filters and ultra-violet treatment plants on the network.”

In May, Pennon revealed it was paying out about £3.5m in compensation to customers affected by the parasite outbreak.

In its latest financial report, it announced an 8.6% increase in underlying operating profits to £166.3m.