Thursday 19th March 2026
Outside the County Court of Thanet
Words by
Photographs by
My name is Julie Wassmer. Some of you may know me as the author of the Whitstable Pearl books and TV series but many of you here today know me as an environmental campaigner who has maintained a four and a half year payment boycott against Southern Water in protest at the company’s criminal record for sewage pollution.
Thank you all for being here today and giving your time and your support, not just to me but to every single one of us who has decided “enough is enough” – we have to call out the water industry in this country for what it has become – nothing more than a legalised scam.
I shan’t be alone in doing that today, because you’ll also hear from five other people; Katy Colley and Olivia Cavanagh are my co-campaigners from Boycott Water Bills and they have come ALL the way from Hastings in Sussex to be with us today. We also have two Green Party speakers; Rob Yates is the Green candidate for the upcoming by- election in Cliftonville next month on April 9th, and Andy Harvey is ward councillor for West Bay and co-leader of the Green group at Canterbury City Council. And a huge thank you goes to Jonbosco Nwogbo, Lead Campaigner for the outstanding WE OWN IT, an organisation that was set up in 2013 by campaigner Cat Hobbs to be “a voice for the people who use public services”. And why do we need that? Because “After 40 years, privatisation of our public services has failed. We use it, we pay for it, we own it. It’s time for public ownership.” Never was a truer word spoken about the water industry!
And the reason we are here today in Margate is because of that building right across the road -– the County Court of Thanet. That’s where I was due to face legal action at 2pm today brought against me by South East Water as the billing agent for Southern Water – except for those of you who don’t yet know, that hearing has been postponed until next Thursday 26th March at 10am at Canterbury County Court. Considering that my very first court hearing was scheduled for 9th February – that hearing might yet be postponed again, due to lack of judicial time, so we decided that this protest should take place today and not become a moveable feast like the court dates.
Why did I begin my payment boycott?
Well, in July 2021, the issue of sewage pollution from water companies seemed to come to the national attention after the media reported the record £90m criminal fine given to Southern Water after an investigation by the EA uncovered what was said to be “the worst environmental crime in the 25-year history of the Environment Agency.” The case focused on 6,971 illegal spills of sewage which amounted to 61,704 hours of releases, or a duration of seven years.
A few months after that shocking trial in Canterbury (at which Southern Water actually made 51 guilty pleas – “it’s a fair cop, Guv!”) I was asked to speak at a protest staged by the campaign group SOS-Whitstable, and if I hadn’t found Southern Water’s serial offences shocking enough, while I was doing some research I discovered that only two years before that record criminal fine, the company had been ordered to pay a fine and penalties totalling £126m following an OFWAT investigation. What caught my attention was what the OFWAT CEO at that time, Rachel Fletcher, said after the investigation, particularly about Southern Water having manipulated its wastewater sampling. She stated:
“What we found in this case is shocking. In all, it shows the company was being run with scant regard for its responsibilities to society and the environment. It was not just the poor operational performance, but the co-ordinated efforts to hide and deceive customers of the fact that are so troubling.”
“Hide and deceive”? Why would any of us now believe the promises Southern Water likes to offer us these days of “turning over new leaves”? If it was you or I who had been found guilty of these crimes – and the shameless deception that accompanied them – we’d all be in jail, wouldn’t we? And so should the CEOs of such water companies.
My payment boycott began here in Margate only months after Southern Water’s criminal court case, when I was marching with local people down on the beach and a campaigner asked why we were still paying our water bills? I had no answer so I asked the same question of SOS-Whitstable but they weren’t keen on promoting a boycott – though three other Whitstable residents were. They happened to be my friend, Emma Gibson, the former Campaigns Director of Greenpeace, her partner Steve Wheeler and Ashley Clark, who was then a Conservative councillor but had also been a police officer and therefore resented paying a criminal company.
Emma and I looked into the potential legal repercussions of non-payment which included suffering pressure from debt recovery companies, court action for recovery and possible problems with credit ratings caused by a CCJ. In the face of all that, we decided that we would take individual action rather than promote this for others – and simply see how long we could last.
Straight away we gained vocal support from Bob Geldof who happens to live near by in Faversham and who had no qualms at all about recommending a boycott campaign to others. Bob had read about our action in the local press and stood up at a local meeting to declare:
“Don’t pay your water bills to Southern Water – they can f**k off. God bless the people of Whitstable. I’m straight there to join them. In fact, I’ll join them immediately!”
That got our payment boycott action straight into the national press – the Guardian and the Times – and a public boycott was then underway – all courtesy of Bob’s outburst.
In 2023, I was contacted by Katy Colley in Hastings who, along with Olivia Cavanagh and others in Sussex, was also withholding her wastewater payments to Southern Water. We joined forces, starting up our group, Boycott Water Bills with its website www.boycottwaterbills.com giving important advice and information to anyone wanting to take their own independent action by withholding the wastewater element of their bills in protest at sewage pollution.
In short, through Katy’s technological skill in setting up, managing and monitoring that site we now know that we have payment boycott action in all 11 wastewater areas and what we believe to be thousands of water customers in this country withholding payment to their own water companies. But I’ll let Katy tell you more about that in a moment.
Importantly, as a water customer, when I first began withholding payment, I informed Southern Water of my action in the belief that I was actually protected under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 by which any consumer has the right to either withhold payment or negotiate a reduction in payment if a company gives a poor or unsatisfactory service.
In fact, what I learned was that water companies are evading responsibility for poor service by claiming protection for themselves via a selective use of the Water Industry Act 1991. In effect, they state they are statutorily obliged to provide services, for which customers are statutorily obliged to pay, no matter how inadequate those services may be – with only the regulatory authorities, like OFWAT having power over them.
I say it cannot be right that in a modern civic society consumers are forced to pay for services which are not being provided at all or which seriously pollute our seas and waterways and damage our precious environment – while denying us a means of challenging this effectively through the legal system. So, in court, I intend to claim that the remedies available to consumers, like us, under the existing statutory scheme, either through OFWAT or the consumer complaints handling processes at Consumer Council for Water or the Water Redress Scheme are insufficient and in principle contravene Article 6 of the Human Rights Act. Katy can to tell you how from our own experience the complaints process regarding the water industry is simply not fit for purpose.
And, sadly, OFWAT is totally discredited as a regulatory authority; consumers do not have the right to make representations to OFWAT or to make any kind of appeal against its conclusions. And the national press have reported concerns about a “merry-go-round” or “revolving door” between OFWAT and the water companies it is tasked with regulating! Senior former OFWAT staff have moved on to roles at water companies, including Cathryn Ross (Thames Water), Andrew Beaver (Northumbrian Water) and Iain McGuffog (South West Water). OFWAT cannot be seen as an adequate forum for dealing with the statutory obligations of the water companies.
Similarly, a significant percentage of those who sit on the Board of CCW, (the main body charged with dealing with complaints from water consumers like us), are current or former water company executives themselves, examples include Bev Keogh, a former water company executive with Thames Water, Welsh Water, and South East Water and Dr Mike Keil (Chief Executive of CCW) who previously worked at Severn Trent Water from 2011.
Meanwhile, Southern Water continues to pollute our local environment with sewerage spills at a level which is well above the levels which might reasonably be expected of a responsible sewerage undertaker. As recently as November 2025, the company was also responsible for the discharge of toxic “beads” on to the beaches of Sussex which spread as far as our own county here in Kent.
And wasn’t privatisation meant to bring better service via competition? We, as water customers are unable to exercise any kind of consumer choice by going to another company because Southern Water is a monopoly waste water service provider in Kent – as is South East Water for water provision – and let’s not forget the wholly unacceptable service from South East when, during a “major incident” in January it left tens of thousands of customers without water, prompting Kent MPs to demand action in parliament. Helen Grant, MP for Maidstone, stated the following:
“South East Water is failing at every level. How can anyone reasonably be expected to pay their water bills, let alone accept yet more price rises, when the company repeatedly fails to meet the most basic standards of service?”At the end of her speech she actually called for the resignation of the Chief Executive, David Hinton.
I too would like to see the back of David Hinton, but I don’t think that’s enough. I’d like to see the back of every water company CEO in this country for whom, by the way, the average pay is £1.7million a year – while OUR bills have gone up 40% in real terms since privatisation and are set to increase far more.
Every day, water companies discharge raw sewage into our rivers and seas more than 1,000 times on average. (over 9 million hours since 2016) and only 14% of English rivers are now considered to have ecological status.
In short, regulation has failed to bring about the necessary investment in infrastructure that should have been financed by the water companies themselves. We, the customers should NOT pay twice for that investment – though the companies say we should – and the government shamefully agrees. I will not pay for a service I fail to receive – and thousands feel exactly the same. We can pay – but we won’t pay. This is the only country in the world to have a fully privatised water industry and it’s a national and international disgrace.
So I will stand in court, next Thursday in Canterbury at 10am and I will defend our position. If I lose, I will be impacted financially by court costs and the claim made against me for payment but it will make no difference to my commitment, and that of thousands of my fellow Boycott Water Bills campaigners in all 11 wastewater areas of this country, who will continue to hold the UK water industry to account while exposing it – in court – as the legalised scam we KNOW it to be. Bring in on!
Speakers at the event
Katy Colley – co-founder of Boycott Water Bills
Andy Harvey – ward councillor for West Bay and co-leader of the Green group at Canterbury City Council
Olivia Cavanagh – co-campaigner from Boycott Water Bills.
Jonbosco Nwogbo -Lead Campaigner for the outstanding organisation WE OWN IT
Rob Yates – Margate Green Party councillor and the Green candidate for the upcoming by-election in neighbouring Cliftonville on April 9th.
Gallery
(Photos by Andrew Hastings. Click on images to enlarge)
Andrew Hastings: https://www.instagram.com/imagedrum/
More on the protest:
For more information visit boycottwaterbills.com
IMPORTANT
Everyone is welcome to join Julie for a photo call outside Canterbury County Court Chaucer Road CT1 1ZA on 26 March at 9.15/9.30, and/or for her court case at 10am, when she will be defending her 4-year payment boycott of Southern Water.
But CHECK her Julie Wassmer (Personal and campaigning) Facebook page on Wed 25th to make sure the case hasn’t been postponed once more. The link to that is: https://www.facebook.com/julie.wassmer.9/
Julie Wassmer is a Whitstable-based author, TV writer and environmental campaigner. She has successfully fought a number of environmental issues, including fracking in Kent and tree clearances by Network Rail. Her Whitstable Pearl crime novels are now a major TV series, starring Kerry Godliman.
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