Hundreds of homes in Kent and Sussex have been left without water following a technical failure at a pumping station, with South East Water facing criticism from MPs over repeated outages.
The outages began on Saturday and peaked on Sunday, affecting around 800 properties in the Kent villages of Charing, Challock and Molash. About 168 homes in Eastbourne, East Sussex, were also affected on Sunday afternoon, with at least 250 homes still without water on Monday.
South East Water attributed the shortages to increased demand due to hot weather, stating it had to pump more water than usual to higher ground. The company urged customers to space out water use to maintain pressure.
Steve Benton, incident manager, apologised and said a technical failure at the Charing pumping station had caused the issues. A bottled water station was opened at Challock village hall, and deliveries were made to vulnerable customers.
The outages come after a committee of MPs accused South East Water's senior executives of incompetence this month, and the company faces a £22m fine from Ofwat over historical supply disruptions. CEO David Hinton has announced plans to step down.
