Gary Carter, a national officer at the GMB union, which represents thousands of water industry workers, said: “For Southern Water’s boss to trouser more than a million pounds after just announcing a hosepipe ban and losing millions of litres in leaks every single day is abhorrent.

Sounds like some enterprising person needs to drill a well in London and benefit from all that freshwater replenishing London's water table.

kagis

Apparently Coca-Cola is on the job.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/25/foreign-firms-taking-billions-of-litres-from-uk-aquifers-to-make-bottled-water

Coca-Cola extracts the largest amount of freshwater of any drinks company in England, the data obtained through freedom of information legislation shows. It has a licence to extract 1.59bn litres of water a year from boreholes in Sidcup, Kent for its soft drinks.

EDIT: Apparently Coca-Cola is extracting water from Thames Water's service area, and what with all the articles about Thames Water, I didn't notice that this article was about Southern Water, but Thames Water apparently leaks vastly more water than Southern Water does anyway.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/sep/08/water-firms-in-england-and-wales-lost-more-than-1tn-litres-from-leaks-last-year

Water companies in England and Wales lost more than one trillion litres of water last year in leaks, the Observer can reveal.

The figures, based on the companies’ 2023-24 annual performance reports, show that millions of litres of water were leaked every day.

The worst performer was Thames Water, which leaked 570.4 megalitres a day last year, or more than 200bn litres in total, equivalent to just under a quarter of its entire water supply. A megalitre is one million litres.

The company said in its 2023-24 annual report that this was “our lowest ever leakage”.

I suppose that given sufficient time, water probably tends to migrate from areas with a higher water table to areas with a lower water table anyway, and the two water companies serve adjacent areas.