Water supply issues for thousands in Kent days after week-long outage
Thousands of people in Kent are once again experiencing water supply issues days after similar disruption.
An estimated 4,500 properties in several rural areas around Maidstone and hundreds more in Tunbridge Wells are experiencing little to no water, South East Water (SEW) said.
The company put the issues down to an electrical fault at a treatment works and the slow recovery of drinking water in storage tanks.
Affected properties in Maidstone, predominately in Harrietsham, Kingswood, Coxheath, Headcorn and surrounding villages are expected to have their supply restored by the end of Sunday.
While disruption is expected to continue until Monday for customers in the Bidborough area of Tunbridge Wells.
South East Water apologised to customers, adding bottled water stations were open to those affected.
The problem is the latest in a long line of issues for the beleaguered water company, which faced heavy criticism last week after some 30,000 homes in Kent and West Sussex had disrupted water supply for six days.
The outage prompted Kent County Council to declare a major incident and water regulator Ofwat to launch a probe into the company.
South East Water staff handing out bottled water last week in East Grinstead. Pic: PA
Pic: PA
The regulator said it was investigating whether SEW had breached its licence conditions by failing to meet customer service standards obligations or by offering appropriate support to those affected.
Months before that, in November and December, Tunbridge Wells suffered a sustained outage, with 24,000 properties in and around the town left without drinkable water for almost two weeks.
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Lynn Parker, Ofwat senior director for enforcement, said the last six weeks had been “miserable for businesses and households across Kent and Sussex, with repeated supply problems”.
If the regulator decides SEW has breached the conditions and should be stripped of the licence, the supplier could fall into a special administration regime until a new buyer was found.
On Friday, Mathew Dean, SEW’s incident manager, said: “We are very sorry to every single one of our customers who have been affected.
“We know and understand how difficult going without water for such a long period of time is and how difficult it makes everyday life.”
