Cambridge Water, a trading name of South Staffordshire Water plc, is a

water supply Water supply is the provision of water by public utilities, commercial organisations, community endeavors or by individuals, usually via a system of pumps and pipes. Public water supply systems are crucial to properly functioning societies. Th ...

utility company serving

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

and the surrounding area. It was established by the ( 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, but was sold on to

HSBC HSBC Holdings plc ( zh, t_hk=滙豐; initialism from its founding member The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business li ...

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 The Competition Commission was a non-departmental public body responsible for investigating mergers, markets and other enquiries related to regulated industries under competition law in the United Kingdom. It was a competition regulator under t ...

. It became part of

South Staffordshire Water South Staffordshire Water plc known as South Staffs Water is a United Kingdom, UK water industry, water supply company owned by a privately owned utilities company serving parts of Staffordshire, the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, as well ...

in 2013. The Cambridge Water Company is a water supply company and does not provide wastewater services.

Anglian Water Anglian Water Services Limited is a water company that operates in the East of England. It was formed in 1989 under the partial privatisation of the water industry. It provides water supply, sewerage and sewage treatment to the area formerly ...

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 Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) (conjugate acid, conjugate base perfluorooctanesulfonate) is a chemical compound having an eight-carbon fluorocarbon chain and a sulfonic acid functional group, and thus it is a perfluorosulfonic acid and a Per ...

(PFOS). People in the Stapleford and Great Shelford area received contaminated water supplies, derived from an

aquifer An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing material, consisting of permeability (Earth sciences), permeable or fractured rock, or of unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, or silt). Aquifers vary greatly in their characteristics. The s ...

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.

Bibliography

References

Companies based in Cambridge Water companies of England Companies based in Hampshire 1853 establishments in England {{watersupply-stub