Southern Water was privatised in 1989. It is ultimately owned by Greensands Holdings Limited, which is owned by a consortium of long-term investors representing infrastructure investment funds, pension funds and private equity firms.

These include UBS Asset Management, JP Morgan Asset Management and Whitehelm Capital, and Hermes Infrastructure funds. Its 2019-20 turnover was £878m and operating profit before interest and tax was £213m.

2008: Shortly after Greensands bought the company, Southern was fined £20.3m by the regulator Ofwat for “systematically manipulating information to conceal its true performance over an extended period of time”.

2013: Southern was fined £200,000 for a raw sewage spill in Kent in 2011 that led to beach closures in Thanet. It appealed against the conviction. An appeal court judge rejected this noting the company’s “persistent record of criminality and offending”.

2015: A £160,000 fine came for discharging raw sewage from East Worthing works into the sea.

2016: The company was fined £2m for discharging raw sewage from Margate wastewater treatment plant in 2012.

2019: Ofwat imposes a £126m penalty for the “shocking” failures at sewage treatment sites in Kent and Hampshire that are the subject of the latest criminal prosecution.