An inquiry has been launched into a water company's delays in handling customer complaints.
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation was started after Southern Water discovered that figures reported to regulator Ofwat about its handling of complaints did not actually match its performance.
Southern Water's chief executive Les Dawson said the company had carried out an internal inquiry with Ofwat and the results were passed to the SFO.
He said: "They have now advised us they will carry out their own inquiry".
Southern Water could be fined millions of pounds after managers admitted they had failed to report thousands of delays in responding to customers' queries.
Ofwat has already announced it would penalise the company for failing to achieve performance standards.
Thousands of customers could also be in line for £25 payments after the firm failed to tackle their complaints.
The firm told Ofwat it had successfully responded to 2,500 complaints within the statutory time limit of ten days during 2004/05. In fact, it had received 8,000 complaints and had failed to respond to a significant proportion of them in the allotted time.
It also neglected to tell Ofwat about a significant proportion of the 60,000 billing inquiries it failed to answer within ten days.
The problems were discovered during the installation of a new billing system.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article