SOUTHERN Water deserves every penalty it gets from the authorities for the way it lets customers down.

The bottom line is that we should be able to trust that our bills are right. Many of us still think of the old water board and a public company that did not have to answer to shareholders and the like.

Many of us are too busy to be checking our bills but sadly we will have to do that or we could be losing out big time.

As we say on our spotlight today the 15,799 complaints received by the company in 2015/16 could be the tip of the iceberg.

How many of us our losing out but do not know about it?

They have to sort it out or they risk being a bigger public enemy than their namesakes who run the train network.

The money is pouring in with big profits to be had.

And thankfully for Chief executive Matthew Wright he can earn a pay packet worth £715,600.

Meanwhile customers are getting poor service.

It is not right that these two facts can exist at the same time.

The problems can be dressed up by the water company all they like, citing new meters. But customers deserve better. We must be able to trust the providers or such an essential provider.

But at the moment we have no confidence that our bills are correct.

The watchdog itself has recognise that Southern Water has had time to make sufficient improvements but they continue like a leaky pipe.

The complaints keep on coming drip by drip but nobody is fixing the washer, they keep just trying to tighten the tap and that isn't working.