South East Water supply disruption continues

Thousands of properties are still facing disruption to their tap water after days of supply problems.

South East Water said nearly 800 properties remained without water supply in the Wraik Hill and Cranbrook areas of Kent on Sunday.

The company added that almost 4,000 properties "may be experiencing low pressure or an intermittent supply during the day" elsewhere in the county.

Bottle collection points opened again on Sunday after taps started running dry for thousands of customers in Kent on 23 May.

Areas affected by intermittent supplies include Coxheath, Loose, Headcorn, Ulcombe, Benenden, Kemsing, Mereworth and Wittersham, according to the company.

Incident manager Mike Court said: "Although our network is continuing to recover, levels of drinking water in our storage tanks are still low and we are asking customers to use water for essential purposes only."

South East Water said overnight repairs to a burst main in Canterbury had restored supply to customers in part of the city who had no water on Saturday.

But Court said drinking water storage tanks in both Wraik Hill and Cranbrook were at "a critical level".

"We are sincerely sorry to customers for disruption to their water supply and know how frustrating it is, especially in hot weather," he said.

The water firm said it had restored supply to affected properties in Whitstable and Herne Bay on Saturday and was continuing to support the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital in Herne Bay and livestock owners in the area with tankers.

Staff have distributed one million litres of bottled water and used tankers to supply more than 2.4 million litres to its network, according to the company.

An estimated 18,000 properties at the peak of the latest incidents had supply issues.

South East Water has been under scrutiny since November, when 24,000 customers lost water supply or pressure in the Tunbridge Wells area.

Customers were then advised to boil their water before consumption for a nine-day period after supply returned.

Weeks later, about 30,000 households in Kent and Sussex faced days of supply issues, which bosses blamed on freezing temperatures and Storm Goretti.

The company announced its chair had departed and its chief executive would also leave following the earlier failures.

Regulator Ofwat recently proposed fining South East Water £22m over supply issues between 2020 and 2023.

On Thursday, Moody's downgraded its credit rating for South East Water, citing the "fallout" from supply failures and "continued resilience risk the company faces".

The company confirmed this affected the conditions of its licence and that it was "constructively engaging" with regulator Ofwat to "agree certain commitments that will secure a return to compliance".

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