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Four former Southern Water employees including Matthew Wright, its former chief executive, face criminal charges over claims they tampered with testing.
The Environment Agency said it planned to prosecute them on the charge of conspiracy to defraud over claims that testing at a waste water treatment works was tampered with between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2017.
A spokesman for the agency said: “We can confirm that we are taking criminal proceedings against Southern Water Services Limited and a number of former employees.
“We take our responsibility to protect the environment very seriously and will always pursue and prosecute those alleged to have committed serious offending against the environment. We welcome this important judgment.”
Conspiracy to defraud is a common law offence carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment. The case will now proceed before the Medway Magistrates Court.
Those facing prosecution alongside Mr Wright are Philip Barker, Clive Massey and Mark Gregory.
The Environment Agency said three other men – Mark Butler, Terry Stephens and David James – faced charges over a failure to comply with environmental permits.
The case relates to the alleged abuse of “operator self-monitoring”, a practice introduced for the water industry in 2009 as part of deregulation. Under the rules, water companies are required to take samples and report the results to the Environment Agency.
Under the rules in place at the time, if an inspector or testing team showed up to take a sample but no water was flowing out of the plant – known as a “no-flow event” – the test would not be conducted. By default, the site would be marked as compliant for that test.
The Environment Agency claimed that there was a conspiracy to engineer artificial “no-flow events” at waste water treatment works.
Southern Water will separately face charges of breaching environmental permits. The utility serves almost five million people across the South East of England.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow.
