Ex-Southern Water boss charged with conspiracy to defraud over ‘contaminated’ water tests

THE former Chief Executive of Southern Water has been charged with conspiracy to defraud after allegedly planning to manipulate water quality tests. Matthew Wright, 60, is accused, alongside three others, of conspiring to defraud the Environment Agency and water regulator Ofwat. The Environment Agency asked a judge to issue a summons against Wright, as well as Philip Barker, Clive Massey and Mark Gregory last year. All of the accused – who worked at the company – have now been charged with conspiracy to defraud. Sign up for The Sun newsletter Thank you! After the summons was issued last year, Wright launched a legal challenge against the move which went to the High Court but has since been dismissed. Two senior judges today ruled that restrictions previously preventing reporting of the legal challenge should be lifted. The case against Wright, Barker, 57, Massey, 64, and Gregory, 63, was scheduled to be heard at Medway Magistrates’ Court on July 14. All four are accused of conspiring between 2012 and 2017 to defraud persons performing public duties. It is alleged they tried to manipulate water quality tests “via the implementation of artificial no-flow events at waste water treatment works.” An artificial no-flow event is a fraudulent practice used in the wastewater industry to manipulate compliance testing. Most read in The Sun It deliberately restricts the discharge of treated effluent during sampling to produce falsely positive pollution test results. Discharge from the Southern Water’s works is tested under an “operator self-monitoring” (OSM) scheme introduced in 2009. This sees discharges tested annually in unannounced visits by by sampling teams, which operate separately from teams that run the works. The results of the tests are shared with the EA and water regulator Ofwat, and can lead to penalties if the works do not comply with the terms of their permits. If the discharge flow at the time of the test is insufficient to take a sample however, this is not regarded as a fail, and no samples are taken for the rest of the testing period. In his ruling issuing the summons against the four men last year, District Judge Stephen Leake said: “The agency alleges, in the present case, that there was a deliberate plan by officers of the company to manipulate the OSM regime by contriving operational circumstances so that there was no flow through the relevant site at times when it was believed that the site would, or might, fail the OSM test, in order to avoid the consequences of the true OSM result being provided to the agency and Ofwat.” Southern Water was previously fined more than £7million for dumping illegal sewage. The major water firm was slapped with the fine at Canterbury Crown Court on Friday, July 17, after dumping sewage illegally off the Kent coast between 2019 and 2021. The company, which serves millions of customers, was said to have caused harm from “a pattern of repeated incidents over several years”. Southern Water pleaded guilty to 13 offences at Medway Magistrates’ Court last April over sewage discharges at Margate and Broadstairs wastewater pumping stations between 2019 and 2021. And, in 2021 the company was fined £90million for nearly 7,000 incidents across Hampshire, Kent and Sussex in a case brought by the Environment Agency.