Fleet firm fined £52,000 for unlawful connections to Thames Water network

Following legal action by Thames Water, fleet services company, Go Plant, has paid £52,000 in fines and costs for repeatedly connecting unauthorised and unlicensed standpipes over the past five years.  

Thames Water said it met with Go Plant in 2022 and 2023 to encourage it to comply with the rules, but it continued to connect to the water supply network illegally. 

Go Plant was prosecuted at Swindon Magistrates court on 12 April, and Reading Magistrates court on 3 May, and has been issued with accumulated fines and costs of £52,000. This, Thames Water said, came five years after its first prosecution at Reading Magistrates Court in February 2019. 

Thames Water reported that more than 400 separate offences were uncovered and prosecuted since 2017 and over 550 retrospective charges have been issued for first offences. In total the water company has recouped £470,000 in the past seven years which, it said, has been reinvested into its clean and wastewater services operations.  

Thames Water’s illegal connections manager, Claire Rumens, said: “As we ask our customers to use water wisely and have engineers working around the clock to find and fix leaks, we are also doing our part to stop illegal connections to our water supply.”