It was established by the Cambridge University and Town Waterworks Act 1853 (16 & 17 Vict.

c. xxiii) and was privately owned until it became a public limited company in 1996.

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 (PFOS).

People in the Stapleford and Great Shelford area received contaminated water supplies, derived from an aquifer near Duxford Airfield in June 2021.

This article about a service company in the United Kingdom is a stub.