Water, water everywhere

Four companies with different responses to accountability: a criminal guilty plea, a legal challenge, a corporate apology, and a PE deal. Not one of them has engaged in repair, most likely because the regulator hasn’t forced them to. That is a fact the sector must reckon with because the pattern is the same, even where the responses differ. Each company caused harm that was measurable, sustained, and in several cases foreseeable. Each company responded to the regulatory consequence — the fine, the prosecution, the enforcement package — rather than to the human damage underneath it. The people who were ill in Brixham, who went without water in Kent and Sussex, who watched sewage flow into rivers across Wales and Yorkshire are conspicuous by their absence in the process of accountability. The regulator imposes a decision, a fine is announced, the shareholders lament and the public are left with "nothing to see here”. 

This fiasco starts in the gap between what these organisations told their customers and what their customers experienced. A fine tells customers what they already know. It does not rebuild trust. 

To date, none of these companies has yet attempted what we would advise: naming the full picture of what happened and to whom; owning the decisions that created the conditions in the first place; involving the people who were harmed in understanding what has changed and why; making a commitment to do things differently that is visible, specific, and measurable. Customers cannot be asked to absorb rising bills with no commitment to improving the service they are paying for.

Were we invited to work with any of these four companies, we would start with three questions: 

• What failed at governance level: where were the oversight structures that should have caught this before it became a criminal charge, a judicial review, or a front page? 

• What is the live risk exposure: not the fine that has been levied, but the human damage that has not yet surfaced in a regulatory return, and what it will cost when it does? 

• And what does resilience actually require: not the capacity to survive another enforcement notice, but the trust, the psychological safety, and the internal confidence that would mean the next crisis never reaches the regulator at all. 

The answers to those three questions are where repair begins.  

The biggest risk is never the fine. It is the customer who has stopped believing in the service; the employee who has stopped believing their organisation deserves their best work; and the investor who has stopped believing the numbers tell the whole story.

Each of these companies is part of a hydra that will keep growing back as Ofwat continues to levy fines. To mandate the work that actually rebuilds trust requires a regulator willing to define what repair looks like, measure it, and hold companies to it.

We are not there yet, and until we are, customers, employees, and investors will keep paying the price.

The governance question is whether your oversight structure would have caught what Ofwat had to find. The risk question is whether you know what human damage is already live in your system before it becomes a regulatory consequence. The resilience question is whether your organisation could absorb another hit to public confidence without it becoming a crisis of a different order entirely.

The boards most exposed are not the ones already in the headlines. They are the ones that do not yet know what is live in their human system; the accumulated decisions, the information asymmetry, the slow erosion of internal confidence that will not surface in a board paper until it is already a crisis.

Our ORI® closes that gap. A one-week human risk scan across nine dimensions. A clear, evidenced picture of where damage is live, where trust has eroded, and what the distance is between where your organisation thinks it is and where it actually is.

You will receive a clear picture of your human risk, in writing, before the conversation goes any further. Email [email protected] to make a start.

The damage sitting inside each of these four water companies did not begin with the fine. It began with decisions that went unmeasured, relationships that went unrepaired, and a human system that nobody was looking at closely enough. Your people are watching the same news cycle and drawing their own conclusions about what accountability looks like at the top; including at yours.

The real damage does not appear in the enforcement notice. It does not resolve when the fine is paid. It never sorts itself out.

Our ORI® measures nine dimensions of human risk. It gives you the data to tell the board what needs to happen next to mitigate risk and stabilise the human system before crisis or disruptive change forces the conversation. The first step is a 30-minute diagnostic conversation with our Head of Client Engagement. You will leave knowing where repair is possible, and what it looks like for your organisation.

The first step is a 30-minute diagnostic conversation with our Head of Client Engagement. You will leave knowing where repair is possible, and what it looks like for your organisation. Email [email protected] to take the next step.

If you are a leader sitting with questions this newsletter has stirred, my Substack this week is for you. It is called "Why rescuing is not repair" and it unpacks exactly why the water companies' responses — the legal challenge, the PR apology, the PE deal — are rescue attempts, not repair.

If you work in a regulated organisation, this one is for you.

When a workplace investigation closes, the paperwork is filed and the recommendations are noted. But what actually happens to the people? The staff who raised concerns. The leaders left holding the damage. The teams who watched and drew their own conclusions about whether speaking up was worth it.

We're building the evidence base on exactly this; and we need your data to do it. "The investigation paradox: why regulated organisations fail to repair human damage after formal processes close"will be published later this year. 

Take the survey here: https://forms.gle/oMQvCZmSgMBUT3Hw9

Survey closes 31 March.

Leah Brown FRSA is the UK's leading specialist in organisational repair and founder of The WayFinders Group.