South East Water shareholders have every right to be jittery.

Their firm needs a new boss

- Nils Pratley

David Hinton told MPs he was reluctant to give interviews during the Kent and Sussex water outages in case he was asked about his pay

(UK PARLIAMENT/PA)

Can David Hinton, the chief executive of South East Water, stay in his job long enough to bag a £400,000 bonus for turning up to work? With four and a half years to go, one can’t say his chances of landing the retention payment - or “service award” - are good.

In fact, it will be surprising if he’s still infuriating the residents of Tunbridge Wells four and a half weeks from now.

In the latest episode of this long-running double saga of outages that has left thousands of households in Kent and Sussex without running water for days, Ofwat has opened a first-of-its-kind investigation into whether South East complied with its obligation to provide “high standards of customer service and support”. That comes a day after Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, called for the regulator to review the company’s operating licence.