Eastleigh MP slams Southern Water after latest bill rises

Liberal Democrat MP Liz Jarvis, MP for Eastleigh, has called Southern Water’s announcement that customer bills will rise by 8% this April a “fleecing”.

Southern Water have announced it will increase its average combined household bill by 8 per cent from April 2026. Customers who receive only water services will see their bills rise by 25.8 per cent. Wastewater-only customers will see their bills decrease by 4 per cent.

The Liberal Democrats have called for Ofwat to be scrapped and replaced with a powerful new regulator with the power to put the environment and customers first. Water companies would move to a mutual ownership model that ensures infrastructure investment is prioritised.

Liz Jarvis, Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh commented:

“It is an absolute insult to ask families to pay even more money during a cost-of-living crisis, while our rivers remain polluted with sewage 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 through years of underinvestment while shareholders laughed all the way to the bank.

“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.

“I will be writing to the Minister because the situation of fleecing customers year-on-year to compensate for Southern Water’s failures cannot be allowed to continue.”