An Apology, Two Years Late

By the Wobbly Editor, 7 March 2026

It took nearly two years. Two years of illness, of fear, of boiling every drop of water. Two years for the residents of Brixham to receive the confirmation of a truth they had lived in their bodies and their homes: that the water supplied to them was not safe. This week, South West Water finally pleaded guilty to supplying water unfit for human consumption. It was not a moment of justice, but a formal, belated admission of a staggering failure.

Let us be clear about what this failure entailed. In May 2024, a microscopic parasite, cryptosporidium, entered the water supply for 2,500 homes in and around the Devon town. The company initially assured residents that the water was safe to drink. It wasn’t. What followed was a public health crisis: at least 150 confirmed cases of a debilitating gastrointestinal illness, four hospitalisations, and hundreds more suffering in their homes. For 54 days, the basic function of turning on a tap for clean water was suspended, replaced by a boil notice and the distribution of over a million plastic bottles.

The human cost of this corporate negligence is not found in the nearly £40 million it cost the parent company, Pennon Group. It’s found in the story of a 10-year-old boy who, after a four-day hospital stay, developed a lasting eating disorder. It’s in the residents who, almost two years on, still suffer from chronic pain and irritable bowel syndrome. It’s in the collective trauma of a community that now instinctively checks its water for strange smells or cloudiness. This is the legacy of South West Water’s failure: a deep and enduring erosion of public trust.

The company has now offered its “full and unreserved apology.” Of course it has.  Such corporate contrition has become a meaningless ritual, driven by a marketing department, rather than any real sense of boardroom remorse. And an apology is not a strategy for ensuring this never happens again. It doesn’t undo the harm. And it rings particularly hollow when set against the company’s broader record. The Brixham outbreak was not an isolated accident - it was the symptom of a deeper sickness.

This is the same company that, in 2024 alone, discharged raw sewage into our seas and coastal waters for a staggering 544,429 hours. It’s the company responsible for an overflow at Salcombe Regis that poured sewage into the sea for almost the entire year. It‘s the company that, according to the regulator, Ofwat, was presiding over “systemic failings” in its wastewater network dating back to at least 2017. And it’s the company now facing a massive class-action lawsuit, expanded just last month, from thousands of residents across Devon and Cornwall who allege their lives and livelihoods have been harmed by relentless sewage pollution.

Where were the regulators in all this? The Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) brought the prosecution, but it took them the better part of two years to secure a guilty plea for an event with a clear and devastating public impact. Ofwat had already identified the “systemic failings” and issued a £24 million penalty in July 2025. And yet, the problems persisted. As the local MP, Caroline Voaden, rightly noted, “the mismatch between rhetoric and action plagues our broken water industry.”

The guilty plea is a necessary first step. But the sentencing in June, whatever the fine, will likely be absorbed as a cost of doing business by a parent company that has already returned to profitability. It will not restore the health of those still suffering, nor will it magically clean the effluent from our beaches.

This is not just about one faulty valve on a piece of private land. It’s about a corporate culture that has repeatedly failed its customers and a regulatory system that has failed to hold it to meaningful account. The residents of Brixham did not just have their water poisoned - their trust was poisoned, too. And that is a contamination that will take far longer than 54 days to purge.