South East Water appoints turnaround specialist John Halsall as CEO designate

(by Karma Loveday)

South East Water has appointed John Halsall as chief executive designate, to take over from David Hinton after a handover period, following Hinton’s resignation last month.

Halsall is a chartered engineer and brings over 35 years of operational and executive leadership experience, including delivering transformation programmes. He specialises in operational turnarounds within heavily-regulated industries.

His infrastructure experience includes:

• South West Water and Pennon Group (2022–2024): Halsall served as chief operating officer for Pennon Group and sat on the South West Water board. He was responsible for all water and wastewater operations across Devon, Cornwall, Bournemouth, and the newly acquired Bristol Water network.

• Network Rail: Halsall’s roles included route director for the south east and leading the southern region.

• Thames Water (1991–2008): Halsall moved through engineering, asset management and capital delivery roles, ultimately serving as director of water services where he was accountable for all aspects of clean water operations, maintenance and capital programmes.

Regarding his new appointment, Halsall said: “My priorities are clear: responding to customers’ immediate concerns around their water service – delivering immediately on the short-term improvements we can make both today and over the coming weeks and months. In the longer term I am excited by the opportunity to deliver the company’s largest ever investment programme of £2.1bn. I see this investment as a vital step to underpinning the provision of the public water supply, improving reliability and resilience in the south east.

“In parallel, I want to see business performance transformed and am committed to modernising South East Water through smarter technology to meet future drinking water supply requirements across our network.”

The appointment is effective immediately but remains subject to regulatory approval.