Southern Water CEO hires bodyguards to protect himself from accountability

Southern Water CEO Lawrence Gosden citizen's arrested by the Citizen’s Arrest Network on 25 November 2025.

Lawrence Gosden, the multi-millionaire bonus-ban-busting CEO of Southern Water has hired a team of bodyguards after he was placed under Citizen’s Arrest last November for overseeing catastrophic harm by Southern Water.¹

He was placed under Citizen’s Arrest at an event (Utility Week Forum) designed to give private utility firm bosses the chance to meet politicians and influence policy. ²

In a press statement Gosden has compared himself with his employees, such as engineers. This is despite him earning at least 35x as much as these workers and, unlike them, having direct control and responsibility for Southern Water’s actions.³

A spokesperson for Citizens Arrest Network said today:

“There’s no confusion. It’s clearly the executives of water companies, the ones who sell us our own water whilst poisoning it, who should be caught and imprisoned for their crimes. That starts with the CEO. Time to hand yourself in Lawrence, not hide behind a team of burly gents.”

“Citizen’s Arrest Network is a non-violent movement which only targets CEOs and senior executives of mass-polluting companies. We are the ordinary women that are being hurt by their crimes. We want to see justice done, and we’re using legal means.”

Southern Water is responsible for the most serious category of sewage pollution into rivers and seas, and is under criminal investigation by the Environment Agency. In November 2025, millions of toxic plastic beads released by Southern Water washed up on the beach of Camber Sands, in East Sussex. It was called the “worst plastic-pellet pollution incident on the UK coast for years”, and an “ecological disaster”. In December 2025, Researchers found “antimony, barium, lead, rubidium, strontium, cadmium, thorium and arsenic” in the sewage-coated plastic beads. These heavy metals are extremely dangerous to humans and animals.⁴⁵⁶⁷

Citizens Arrest Network is currently being represented by leading human rights law firm Leigh Day to take a case against Thames Water CEO Chris Weston. The evidence being gathered supports crimes amounting to public nuisance against Weston, a crime that carries a 10 year maximum sentence. The charges focus on unsafe infrastructure, unsafe drinking water, environmental damage and illegal sewage spills, which pose a risk to the public's access to clean water, and mismanagement of funds following bill increases and Weston’s bonus ban.⁸