Water bills for residents in Hampshire will increase by almost 50 per cent, it has been confirmed.

The rise, confirmed by industry body Water UK, will take the average UK water and wastewater bill from £480 to £603 for the next year alone.

Southern Water customers have been told they will see a 47 per cent increase.

It will see the average yearly Southern Water bill reach £703.

Other factors, such as whether a customer is metered and how much water they use, means the bill changes will vary considerably for customers depending on their circumstances.

Jill Woolger, 66, who was one of the thousands of residents left without water for two days following an outage last month, called the price hike “disgraceful”.

She added the “massive increases” are unsustainable and described the price hike as “galling” after Southern Water customers were told the fine will be reflected as cuts in their 2025/26 bill after Ofwat fined the water company £31.9 million last October.

“It was said that customers would then be receiving amounts reduced in their bills as a reflection of the poor service that they’d so far received,” Ms Woolger said.

“What I find really galling is now we’ve just been told that we’ve got this enormous price increase in our bills, which is just disgraceful.”

She criticised the water companies for not doing more to improve its infrastructure and fears the onus to pay for these investments has fallen heavily on customers.

“They (Southern Water) have had years of not putting money into the infrastructure, so why are we are now all of a sudden faced with these increases?,” Ms Woolger said.

“I don’t understand why we are considered completely responsible for paying for all of those (investments).”

Liz Jarvis, Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh, called the increase in bills "outrageous".

"Instead of tackling Southern Water or taking them to task, the Government has given them free reign - and residents in Eastleigh are paying the price.

“It’s a disgrace that water companies have been able to hike our bills - a third of which goes on servicing debt - while they fail to fix leaks and pollute our rivers and streams."

Antonia Barton, chief customer officer at Southern Water, said: “We understand an increase in bills is never welcome but our communities have told us that we need to invest more now so we can deliver the real change they expect and our environment deserves.

“That’s why we must now raise bills, which have been kept artificially low for too long.

“Customers will see the sharpest rise this spring to allow us to frontload investment into major infrastructure projects, with future annual increases falling for the rest of the 2025-30 spending period.”