Thousands of residents across Kent are continuing to face severe water supply issues, with some areas experiencing a “complete lack of water”, South East Water (SEW) has confirmed.
The utility company announced on Saturday that approximately 7,000 properties around the Tunbridge Wells area were affected by low pressure, intermittent supply, or no water at all. This widespread disruption was attributed to an “instrument failure” at a nearby water treatment works.
By Sunday morning, SEW indicated it was “on target” for supplies to begin returning that evening “at the earliest”, and issued an apology to all impacted customers.
Steve Benton, an incident manager for SEW, stated: “We are genuinely sorry to all customers currently experiencing low pressure, intermittent supply, or a complete lack of water today (Sunday July 19).”
“This is not the service we aim to provide, and is not the service our customers deserve.”
He added: “The levels in our drinking water storage tanks are improving, however we want to ensure that once supplies return to customers, this will be a stable, continuous flow.
“To do this, we need to allow our storage tanks to replenish to a higher level than they currently are, we are still on target to see water supplies return later this evening at the earliest.”
Bottled water stations set up by the company will be open until 8pm on Sunday at the Tesco Superstore on Pembury Road in Tunbridge Wells and at Tunbridge Wells Rugby Football Club in St Marks Recreation Ground.
The company said it is using tankers to increase drinking water storage levels to support the affected areas and delivering bottled water to customers on its priority services register.
Earlier this week, the water company was ordered to pay £30.5 million after investigations by industry watchdog Ofwat following previous supply interruptions affecting hundreds of thousands of households across Kent and Sussex.
Ofwat said the redress package concludes three investigations into the supplier and includes a previously proposed £22 million fine for water supply failures between 2020 and 2023, which impacted more than 286,000 people.
The regulator launched a second probe at the start of this year after further supply interruptions in Tunbridge Wells and across Kent and Sussex between November and January, which left up to 70,000 homes without water.
The third investigation followed the downgrading of SEW’s credit rating by Moody’s in May, which meant the firm was in breach of its licence condition.
SEW warned in its annual report this week that it needs to secure fresh financing to stay afloat after taking a £55 million hit from outages over the winter.
The water supplier to around 2.3 million customers in the South East of England said it was in discussions with lenders to agree a new loan facility.
It has enough cash to keep going until July 2027 but flagged that “shortly after” it will need to get more financing.
