Major incident declared as 30,000 properties hit by water outages

A major incident has been declared as 30,000 properties in Kent and Sussex are without a proper water supply.

South East Water (SEW) has blamed the latest outage, across 11 postcode areas, on Storm Goretti and cold weather causing burst pipes and power cuts.

On Monday, many customers in Tunbridge Wells, East Grinstead, Maidstone, Whitstable, Canterbury, and surrounding towns are without water.

Beleaguered SEW have said their repair teams are working “around the clock” and have apologised.

Incident manager Matthew Dean, said: “We’re sorry to our customers across Kent and Sussex who are experiencing issues with their drinking water supply, including no water, intermittent supply interruptions or low pressure.

“Following the recent cold weather and a subsequent breakout of leaks and bursts across Kent and Sussex, our drinking water storage tanks are running very low and there are currently around 30,000 impacted properties across the two counties.

“This includes 16,500 properties in East Grinstead and the surrounding areas in Sussex, with parts of Tunbridge Wells also affected, along with some localised issues in other parts of Kent.

“We are incredibly sorry to all customers and businesses who have been impacted by this and we are doing all we can to restore supplies as soon as possible.”

MP for East Grinstead, Uckfield and the Villages Mims Davies told the Press Association that her constituents had been at the “epicentre” of this outage.

Ms Davies said: “We’ve had a lot of people affected, whether it is business, or indeed there was meant to be a fun run for a local charity here on Sunday which has been cancelled.

“People have had to close businesses, schools are not open today – it’s been an absolutely horrendous weekend.”

The Kent and Medway Resilience Forum (KMRF), a partnership of agencies and councils, have declared a major incident.

A KMRF spokesperson said: “Resilience Forum partners are working tirelessly together with the water companies to limit the impact on communities, businesses and residents and will continue to do so until the situation is completely resolved.”

Last week, the chief executive of SEW, David Hinton, was questioned by MPs during a parliamentary committee hearing about his handling of an incident last month, in which 24,000 customers in Tunbridge Wells were left without water for several days.

The chairman of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Alistair Carmichael, later sent a letter questioning the “accuracy and intent” of Mr Hinton’s evidence.

Speaking outside one of the bottled-water stations, Ms Davies said she was “doubtful” the current SEW leadership could fix this issue.

“I spoke to Dave (Hinton) this morning and I was very clear that I think he’s going to struggle to convince me and others, and most importantly my constituents and bill payers, that he can lead this company through,” she said.

Details of bottled-water stations opened by SEW in East Grinstead and Ashford can be found on the company’s website.

A bottled-water station at Tunbridge Wells Rugby Football club has run out of supplies, and will not be open again until 6pm, the company has said.

“We’ve seen an increase in footfall as water supplies to your homes went off much earlier than we expected this morning, meaning supplies have run out faster. Once again, we’re very sorry for this,” said Mr Dean.

One woman, driving with a child to pick up water from East Grinstead Sports Club, said hygiene was the biggest issue.

Speaking from her car, she said: “It’s ridiculous isn’t it, it’s just totally inconvenient. I mean we’ve had worse situations with Covid but it isn’t ideal – it’s just really unhygienic, so that’s the main thing.”

Mr Dean said: “Our customer care team is delivering bottled water to the customers on our priority services register who are most in need and we have carried out 5,700 deliveries of bottled water over the weekend.

“We are also supporting hospitals with tankers and providing bottled water for care homes, schools, medical care providers and to support livestock.”