South West Water (SWW) have pleaded guilty to supplying water unfit for human consumption at Exeter Magistrates’ Court today (March 4).

Speaking after the hearing, a spokesperson for South West Water issued the following statement: “We want to reiterate our full and unreserved apology for the impact of the incident in the Brixham area in 2024.

“We have co-operated fully with the Drinking Water Inspectorate throughout its investigations. Today is another stage of this legal process which we will continue to support.

“This was an unprecedented, albeit thankfully isolated and rare event. We have continued to work closely with the rest of the sector to prevent this from happening again. Damage caused to our assets on third party land is serious and we want tougher regulation in place to make sure that critical national infrastructure assets are protected at all times.

“We had 800 people supporting the 2,500 homes affected by the outbreak. Our teams, including engineers and scientists, worked 24 hours a day to clean thousands of metres of pipework and restore the safe supply of water.

“SWW delivered a number of interventions; including cleaning and flushing the network almost 30 times, ‘ice pigging’, and the installation of specialised filters and ultra-violet treatment systems.

“We have worked hard within the local communities to try to put this right. This includes working with the English Rivera BID company to boost the local economy and restore trust in the Brixham area, where we invested £1.2m in a Marketing Recovery Fund.

According SWW’s statement, English Rivera BID company added: “We are pleased to say, that thanks to the support of South West Water, we have seen an increase in family booking numbers to our region.

“South West Water has given us the support that has enabled us to run campaigns aimed at encouraging people to come to Brixham and the surrounding Torbay area this Summer.

“We are looking forward to welcoming past and new visitors to our beautiful region.”