We can't guarantee no more supply issues - water firm

A water company has told customers it cannot guarantee supply failures would not happen again during the summer months.

Nick Price, head of water resources at South East Water, issued the warning as customers in Kent continued to experience disruption after supply issues began on May 23.

More than 3,000 properties would experience "intermittent supplies" on Monday and about 120 would have no water at all, the firm said.

Price said: "I absolutely can't guarantee it will not happen again, but I can assure you that all our staff are doing their absolute best to make sure that events like this don't occur again this summer."

"Fingers crossed we are better prepared next time and we don't have any further incidents," he told BBC Radio Kent.

About 22,000 properties were impacted at the peak of the outage last week.

Areas impacted by low pressure or intermittent supplied were Coxheath, Loose, Headcorn, Ulcombe, Benenden and Kemsing, according to SEW.

The company said it expected the water to be returned to nearly all the households with no supply later on Monday.

It said it was delivering water to schools in areas affected by long-running problems so they could remain open.

The firm added that 2.6 million litres had been supplied to the network by tankers and that bottles had been delivered to vulnerable customers and critical care settings.

Bottled water stations reopened at five locations as bosses continued to urge customers to only use water for essential purposes.

Price told the BBC the supply issues were not caused by low water resources.

The disruption was a result of "high demand" after warm weather, and "our ability to take the water from our water sources and get them to customers quickly", he said.

"It's to do with the demand for water, rather than the water resource availability."

The executive apologised to affected customers and said: "With the weather cooling today, we are hopeful that demand will start to reduce and it will allow our storage tanks to increase."

The bottled water stations open on Monday were:

• Sainsbury's Altira Business Park, 6 The Boulevard, Herne Bay
• Sainsbury's Reeves Way, Chestfield, Whitstable
• Kavanagh Cinema, William Street, Herne Bay
• YMCA, Melrose Close, Maidstone
• Staplehurst Village Hall, High Street

Water regulator Ofwat said it was "closely monitoring the ongoing water supply interruptions".

"The financial and operational turnaround of South East Water is essential, and we expect the company's management to grip this issue quickly," a spokesperson said.

Mike Keil, chief executive of the Consumer Council for Water, said customers "should not be left sweating on whether their taps will run dry every time we hit a spell of hot or cold weather".

Some 24,000 customers lost water supply or pressure in the Tunbridge Wells area.

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

Kent County Council leader Linden Kemkaran said on Monday that residents had "had it up to our eyeballs" with water problems.

South East Water announced in May that its chair had departed and its chief executive would leave following the failures.

Ofwat has proposed fining SEW £22m for separate incidents between 2020 and 2023.

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