All customers of Thames Water are to receive a rebate on their bills after it failed to sufficiently tackle problems with leaks.

The water company serves an area which includes north west Kent - taking in the towns of Sevenoaks, Dartford and Gravesend.

Thames Water has agreed to pay £65 million back to customers on top of £55m in automatic penalties incurred for missing commitments to reduce leakage - making a total of £120m to be returned to customers.

It means each customer will receive compensation of around £15 over the next two years.

The money will come from Thames’ shareholders, a large majority of which are long-term pension funds, and be reflected in customer bills starting in 2019/20.

It follows an investigation by Ofwat into leaks on the firm's network.

Steve Robertson, Thames Water CEO, said: “Reducing leakage is really important to us and to our customers.

"We met our leakage targets for a decade but our recent performance has not been good enough. We let our customers down and for that we’re sorry. We have taken more control of how we manage the network and are investing significantly more in people and resources to tackle leakage, get back on track and then go beyond.

"Thanks to these changes already in place, our current leakage repair performance is our best ever at around 1,000 a week. Our focus is to restore customers’ trust and confidence in Thames Water.”

Thames Water is Britain’s biggest water company, serving 15 million customers across London and the Thames Valley.