SOUTHERN Water has been named the worst performing company in the industry for the fifth year running.

The Consumer Council for Water (CCWater) says the firm has a lot more work to do to curb the number of complaints it receives from customers.

However the watchdog said Southern had improved its performance by reducing the number of written complaints by almost 45 per cent in the last financial year.

Southern also reported a 54 per cent increase in “unwanted contacts”, where its customers had to pick up the phone to resolve an issue.

The company has attributed this to a review of its internal recording processes.

Southern provides services for four and a half million people across Sussex, Kent, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

London and South East chairman for CCWater Sir Tony Redmond said: We are encouraged by Southern’s improvement but its performance remains poor in comparison to the rest of the industry. There is a lot more work to be done by the company.”

Southern chief customer officer Simon Oates said the firm would continue to work with CCWater to improve its rankings.

He said: “Our teams have worked so hard over the last year and we are all committed to continuing to improve responsiveness and focus more on meeting the individual needs of our customers.

“We’ve carried out a thorough review to ensure we can make it easier to do business with us – whether it’s online, face to face or over the phone.

“This includes making significant improvements to our website and customer contact centre.

“We want to reassure our customers we’re building on the significant improvements we have already made and bringing our performance up to the standard they quite rightly expect from us.”

Southern has experienced a number of issues in the last decade, including inflation -busting price increases and several incidents of damaging the environment and putting the public at risk.

Last month it emerged Southern Water accidentally released as much as 17 million litres of sewage into the sea after a power outage at its East Worthing pumping station.

The leak followed a similar incident at the same station back in 2012 when 40 million litres of sewage was released into the sea, leading to beaches along a ten-mile stretch to be closed for six days.

Southern was prosecuted in that instance and fined £160,000 with £27,000 costs.

In 2007 it was hit with a £20.3 million fine for lying about its service and overcharging customers.

The water regulator found the company had “systematically manipulated information” which meant it was able to raise its charges by more than it should have done.

The same year the company was fined £8,000 after it released sewage on to the beach and into the sea at Bexhill.

The following year customer complaints increased by 155 per cent but water rates increased year on year above inflation.

In 2008 they went up by 5.8 per cent, in 2011 it was 6.4 per cent and then 8.2 per cent the following year.

In 2012 Southern was fined £10,000 after fish were killed in a sewage leak.