Residents of a Kent village staged a water bottle protest after being left without water, spelling out the words "help us" with their depleted bottles. The protest took place on Monday on Benenden village green, which has turned straw yellow by the drought.
Around 7,400 properties in Herne Bay, Rough Common and Blean in Kent had their water supplies restored as of Tuesday morning, but 400 were still struggling with low pressure or no water access at all.
Villagers' plea
A group of between 60 to 70 people, who had collected all the plastic water bottles they had been using, laid them out to spell their plea on the parched ground. One Benenden resident, Nicola Stanway, told the Press Association that everyone in the village wants to be heard and have a voice. She said she had retreated to the local pub, the Bull at Benenden, after being left without water for five days.
Nicola, 41, an estate agent, said: "This morning I haven’t received any deliveries of water so been reliant on coming here and using Lucy’s (pub landlord) water." She added that South East Water's handling of the situation was "disappointing", saying: "It’s frustrating, the amount of excuses, every couple of days it’s something different."
Pub owner's struggle
Pub owner Lucy Barron-Reid said the protest was to prove a point how much people use plastic bottled water for basic washes, going to the toilet, cooking, cleaning and looking after animals. For her business, she said: "Apart from Covid this is the hardest thing we have had to deal with. Over the last few years we have had sporadic water outages and this year has become really severe, which has been extremely difficult to run a business."
She said they made the decision to remain open since losing water last Thursday to avoid joining the statistics of pubs that close down. The pub landlady of 22 years said the handling from South East Water is "absolutely shocking" and as a business in the outages they have to buy their own water from a different company. "But our community has stepped in," the 56-year-old said, adding it is getting to the point they have not got water either.
Government and MP response
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said another disruption for South East Water (SEW) customers was "simply not good enough". A Defra spokesperson said: "South East Water needs to go further and faster to reduce leaks and follow their drought plans to ensure supplies are not disrupted in even the driest of weather. Their new leadership must now deliver a step change in performance, where customers’ needs are prioritised and there is a stop to supply outages."
Weald of Kent MP Katie Lam, whose constituency includes the areas still impacted by the issues, said outages have become "depressingly common". She said the outages were "simply not good enough", adding: "People rightly expect that when they turn on the tap, water comes out. They should not have to plan their lives around the latest South East Water outage. South East Water needs fundamental transformation — the new leadership team recognise this, and they will need to move fast to achieve the reliable service people rightly demand."
Previous failures and fines
In July, 7,000 homes in the Tunbridge Wells area had supply issues because of a failure at a treatment works. In Benenden, bottled water was left outside houses while a South East Water van was seen driving through the village. SEW was ordered to pay £30.5 million in July after investigations by industry watchdog Ofwat following previous supply interruptions affecting hundreds of thousands of households across Kent and Sussex.
Ofwat said the redress package concluded three investigations into the supplier and includes a previously proposed £22 million fine for water supply failures between 2020 and 2023, which impacted more than 286,000 people. The regulator launched a second probe at the start of this year after more supply interruptions in Tunbridge Wells and across Kent and Sussex between November and January, which left up to 70,000 homes without water.
"After years of failure, we have taken swift action to hold water companies to account," the Defra spokesperson added. "We have banned unfair water boss bonuses and will establish a new, single regulator with greater powers to drive transparency, helping to rebuild customer trust and protect the environment." SEW said on Tuesday bottled water stations, including at the Weald Sports Centre in Cranbrook and Sturry Road Park and Ride in Canterbury would be open until 10pm for customers affected by the latest incident. A spokesperson said staff and contractors had been subject to abuse in recent days, adding: "Whilst we understand the frustrations due to the current disruption, our team is working to restore supplies and deliver water to customers. We do not tolerate any abuse towards our staff and the safety of our staff and contractors is paramount."
