Thousands of residents across Kent are still dealing with water supply issues after yet more outages from the under-fire operator, South East Water.
The water supply of more than 5,500 households was affected on Sunday evening due to a treatment works fault, a power outage and two burst mains.
A major incident was declared earlier this week when 30,000 homes in Kent and Sussex were left without water for days. South East Water has faced heavy criticism from MPs and the public after a similar outage before Christmas left 24,000 people in Tunbridge Wells without drinking water for two weeks.
A fault at a treatment works on Saturday left 4,500 homes in villages outside Maidstone with no water or low water pressure. By Sunday night, South East Water said the issue had been fixed and that normal service was expected to resume overnight.
Another 800 homes in Linton near Maidstone had similar issues on Sunday after a burst main, with repairs due to take place overnight. And 320 homes were still dealing with disrupted water supply in Bidborough, five days after South East Water first reported a power outage.
On Sunday evening, another burst main between Maidstone and Ashford left 500 homes that had already been hit by the treatment works failure with no water or low pressure. The water company has been arranging bottled water stations in Maidstone, Ashford and Tunbridge Wells.
It was also revealed this week that the treatment centre failure in November was foreseen weeks before it happened and could have been stopped, according to the regulator. Marcus Rink, the chief inspector at the Drinking Water Inspectorate, told MPs the problem had begun on 9 November when there was a “noticeable deterioration” at the plant and the company had also failed to do proper testing.
The environment secretary, Emma Reynolds, has called on Ofwat to review the company’s licence to operate. The water regulator has launched an investigation into whether South East Water had “complied with its obligation to provide high standards of customer service and support for its customers”.
South East Water’s chief executive, David Hinton, has faced calls to resign and refuse his bonus for this financial year. But the water boss, who earned £457,000 in the year to June 2025, is still in line for a £400,000 long-term bonus regardless of his performance, if he stays in the job until 2030.
South East Water’s incident manager, Matthew Dean, said: “We’re sorry to customers currently impacted by the water supply interruptions across our network in Kent.
“Elsewhere, tankers are still being used to inject water into storage tanks across Kent to continue balancing the network. Our leak repair teams are working around the clock to fix the leaks and bursts across Kent and Sussex, with extra resources available to help carry out repairs.”
#Thousands #Kent #residents #dealing #water #supply #issues #Kent
