Cambridge Water Company

Cambridge Water, a trading name of South Staffordshire Water plc,^[1][2] is a water supply utility company serving Cambridge and the surrounding area.

Cambridge University and Town Waterworks Act 1853
Act of Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Citation	16 & 17 Vict. c. xxiii
Dates
Royal assent	14 June 1853
Text of statute as originally enacted

Offices of Cambridge Water Company on Fulbourn Road

It was established by the Cambridge University and Town Waterworks Act 1853 (16 & 17 Vict. c. xxiii) and was privately owned until it became a public limited company in 1996. It was sold to CK Infrastructure Holdings (CKI) in 2004,^[3] but was sold on to HSBC in 2011. The sale was made because CKI wanted to acquire Northumbrian Water, and retaining Cambridge Water would have resulted in the takeover of Northumbrian Water being referred to the Competition Commission.^[4] It became part of South Staffordshire Water in 2013.^[5]

The Cambridge Water Company is a water supply company and does not provide wastewater services.^[6] Anglian Water provides wastewater services to Cambridge Water customers.

Controversies

In 2022, Cambridge Water admitted that it failed to inform over a thousand of its customers that it had supplied water contaminated with four times the permitted amount of a 'forever chemical', known as perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS). People in the Stapleford and Great Shelford area received contaminated water supplies, derived from an aquifer near Duxford Airfield in June 2021. The water company refused to say how long customers had been receiving contaminated supplies, but stated that it had diluted water from that aquifer with water from other sources so as to lower the level of pollutant.^[7]

Bibliography

• Ofwat (2006). "The Development of the Water Industry in England and Wales" (PDF). OFWAT.