South East Water has been told to improve after thousands of customers faced supply issues once again, with some branding the handling as “shocking”. The company has warned customers in Kent that water levels in its drinking storage tanks remain “critically low” and urged them to only use water for “essential” purposes.
Supply restored to most properties
Supply had been restored to 7,400 properties in Herne Bay, Rough Common and Blean by Tuesday morning, but 400 homes were still facing low pressure or no water. In Benenden, around 60 to 70 residents staged a protest on Monday evening, spelling out “Help us” with plastic water bottles on the green.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said another disruption for South East Water 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.”
Residents and businesses affected
Weald of Kent MP Katie Lam, whose constituency includes areas still impacted, said outages have become “depressingly common”. In July, 7,000 homes in the Tunbridge Wells area had supply issues due to a failure at a treatment works.
Resident Nicola Stanway, 51, said she has been out of water since Thursday and has not received deliveries. She said: “This morning I haven’t received any deliveries of water so been reliant on coming here and using Lucy’s (pub landlord) water. But we have seen lots of houses around here that are empty with bottled water, it’s ridiculously distributed, it’s not been well planned or orchestrated at all.”
Pub owner Lucy Barron-Reid said the protest was to prove how much people use plastic bottled water for basic tasks. 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.”
Company response and regulatory action
South East Water’s incident manager, Mike Court, said on Tuesday that supplies have been restored to 7,400 properties in Herne Bay, Rough Common and Blean, but properties in Herne Bay may experience intermittent supplies later due to high demand, as the storage tank remains at a critical level. Approximately 400 properties in Benenden, Cranbrook and Rolvenden are continuing to experience low pressure or no water.
Ms Lam criticised the “depressingly common” outages as “simply not good enough”. She said: “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.”
In July, South East Water was ordered to pay £30.5 million after investigations by Ofwat following previous supply interruptions. The redress package includes a previously proposed £22 million fine for failures between 2020 and 2023, impacting more than 286,000 people. The regulator launched a second probe at the start of this year after interruptions in Tunbridge Wells and across Kent and Sussex between November and January, leaving up to 70,000 homes without water.
SEW said on Tuesday that bottled water stations, including at the Weald Sports Centre in Cranbrook and Sturry Road Park and Ride in Canterbury, would be open until 10pm. 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.”
