An MP has called for the boss of South East Water to resign after thousands of homes and businesses in Tunbridge Wells have been without water for a third day. Mike Martin, the Liberal Democrat MP for the Kent town, described the situation as “an utter disgrace” and blamed the company’s chief executive, David Hinton, for a “failure of leadership”.
South East Water confirmed that the supply problems were caused by a fault at the Pembury Water Treatment Works, which shut down on Saturday night after a “bad chemical batch” disrupted operations. The company says the facility has resumed normal service, but supplies are not expected to return to normal until Tuesday due to repressurisation and airlocks in pipes.
As many as 23,000 homes and premises have been affected. The company has set up bottled water distribution points and tankered more than 5 million litres of water into the town. Incident manager Matthew Dean apologised to customers and said around 18,000 properties remain without water, with more expected to have supplies restored overnight.
Speaking to reporters, Mr Martin repeatedly called for Mr Hinton’s resignation, noting that a similar six-day outage occurred in 2022. “Dave Hinton, who earns half a million pounds a year, must resign,” he said. “This is a total failure of leadership. He promised lessons would be learned around crisis management, communications and resilience. All of that turned out to be completely false.”
Mr Martin added that vulnerable people, including those unable to self-catheterise, and care homes have suffered, while businesses have lost thousands of pounds. In response, Mr Dean said the company’s focus is on restoring supplies and that a thorough investigation will follow.
