Outrage among Sussex residents after Southern Water increases bills

Southern Water customers – who pay for water and wastewater services – were told to expect a nine per cent rise this year – from £1.20 per day (£439 per year) to £1.31 per day (£479 per year). Meanwhile, water only bills will go up by 7.7 per cent and waste only by 10 per cent.

One person reported on social media: "We have our bill just arrived for this year coming – 63 per cent increase, £56 to £87.77 per month. They must be joking.”

One response to this on the Nextdoor community page read: "It's absolutely disgusting, mine has gone up the same. There are parents struggling to feed their kids and keep them warm and bills continue to rise."

Another customer added on Facebook: "We have just had our 2025-26 bill from Southern Water. It’s increased from last year's £352.46 to £535.30. That’s an increase of 51.8754 per cent. How in God's name can this be justified?"

Josh Babarinde, Member of Parliament for Eastbourne, was among the MPs to express concern, earlier this year, over an ‘outrageous’ bill increase by Southern Water.

Antonia Barton, Southern Water’s chief customer officer, said: "We understand an increase in bills is never welcome but our communities have told us that we need to invest more now so we can deliver the real change they expect and our environment deserves.

“That's why we must now raise bills, which have been kept artificially low for too long. Customers will see the sharpest rise this spring to allow us to frontload investment into major infrastructure projects, with future annual increases falling for the rest of the 2025-30 spending period.

“For customers needing a little help to pay, we are also increasing our package of financial support, which will see us add a further 18,000 customers to our minimum 45 per cent discount scheme, among a raft of other measures.”

When contacted by Sussex World, Southern Water pointed to the fact that bills have been the same in nominals terms at about £420 – a year for water and wastewater on average for more than a decade. That’s equivalent to a real terms cut of around 40 per cent.

The water company added: “Our 25/26 bills have been based on Ofwat’s Final Determination, set out in December 2024, but now include inflation.

"As we set out in our business plan, bills were always anticipated to rise quickest in the first year of the 2025-30 spending period, to fuel investment programmes – before flattening in the coming years.”

Southern Water said it is offering customers a £37m package of financial support in 2025/26, which includes:

– ‘Increasing essentials social tariff support’ to those who may need help with rising bills by an extra 18,000 customers, up from 137k in 2024-25 to 155k in 2025-26, who will each receive a minimum discount of 45 per cent;

– ‘Quadrupling our hardship fund’ to £1.25m to help with bill reductions and grants towards home appliances;

– Continue schemes for debt write offs and capping water bills.

The company added: “We have plans to further expand our support package during the rest of the spending period up to 2030.”