Frustration mounts over Kent water supply disruption

Lili Sheppard/BBC

Residents have expressed anger as water supply issues cause misery for thousands of people across Kent during soaring temperatures.

South East Water (SEW) has blamed the demand for water amid the hot weather for causing outages at 18,000 properties, and has urged customers to use water for essential purposes only when they have supplies.

Greg Lawrence from Whitstable, who was queuing at the Herne Bay bottle water station, told BBC Radio Kent it was “very frustrating” to have supply issues during the hot weather.

Lili Sheppard/BBC

“We’ve had a wet May and several days of heat, and this crisis happens,” Lawrence added.

“We’ve had low pressure on Tuesday evening and I woke up today without water. We can’t do washing or flush the toilet, it’s not nice especially in this heat.”

He said he did not have “confidence” in SEW to resolve the problem soon, adding the company “didn’t seem to have any contingency plans for extreme weather”.

“We had to wait in the queue for nearly one hour for them to open and there was one pallet of water left.”

Lawrence believed the nationalisation of water companies could be the answer to improved services.

Areas impacted include the towns of Maidstone, Ashford, Herne Bay, Whitstable, and several Kent villages.

Jeff Higgins, a jam maker for the Wooden Spoon in Wye, told Radio Kent that the company has not been able to make any jam since Monday.

“Our cooking vessels use steam and the alternative, which is gas cooking, is no good because we can’t wash the pans afterwards,” he said.

Higgins added the pasteurisation process for the jam was also water-based.

He told the BBC the supply disruption has not only impacted the business’ finances, but it was also “frustrating”.

“It has been extremely hot for a few days, and it seems to be the pumping stations that are breaking down [due to the extra demand],” he said.

“The infrastructure does really need fixing.”

Lili Sheppard/BBC

Lee Ferris, from Herne Bay, a priority customer, says he has not had any water deliveries yet.

“I have diabetes and it’s been so hard especially in this heat,” he adds.

“My water has been off for days and when it did come back on last night it was brown water running through.”

Ferris added SEW should have been “more prepared”, especially knowing hot weather was coming.

Lili Sheppard/BBC

Lucy from Herne Bay, who has been queuing at the bottle station, said: “We can’t shower, fill up sauce pans or the kettle.

“I have lots of animals and I need to be able to give them fresh water everyday so it has impacted us.”

‘Solutions needed now’

Sir Roger Gale, MP for Herne Bay, said the ongoing disruptions were “unacceptable”.

“There is no excuse for this, but there are reasons why disruptions keep happening,” he said.

He said the reasons included “lack of investment in infrastructure”.

“There are plans to build a reservoir in Broad Oak, but we need solutions now,” he added.

Could nationalisation fix South East Water?

SEW said storage reservoirs had reached critical levels in Whitstable and Herne Bay.

The company said on Tuesday alone, it had pumped 660 million litres of water to customers across the region – more than 100 million litres more than the average for a day.

Bottled water stations are set up in the following locations

• Challock Village Hall, Blind Lane, Challock, Ashford, TN25 4AU from 09:00 to 21:00 BST

• Kingsnorth Church of England Primary School , Church Hill, Kingsnorth, TN23 3EF from 09:00 to 22:00 BST

• Sainsbury’s Altira Business Park, 6 The Boulevard, Herne Bay, CT6 6GZ from 09:00 to 22:00 BST

Impacted areas

Areas that are experiencing supply issues in Kent as of 21:00 BST on Wednesday include:

• Whitstable
• Pilgrims Way, Kemsing and Sevenoaks
• Campion Crescent, Cranbrook
• Tankerton
• Ashford and surrounding areas
• Ulcombe Hill, Ulcombe, Maidstone
• Amage Road, Wye, Ashford
• Herne Bay
• Radfall
• Coxheath, Maidstone
• Charing, Challock, Molash and surrounding areas

The following areas in Sussex that are facing disruption include:

This comes as nearly 800 properties across three villages in Kent experienced several days of water supply disruptions from Saturday until Tuesday.

Regulator Ofwat recently proposed fining SEW £22m over issues affecting 286,000 people in Kent and Sussex between 2020 and 2023.

Between November and December, some 24,000 SEW customers had no water supply or low pressure following a plant failure, which led to a boil water notice for several days.

Weeks later, up to 30,000 households faced days of water chaos – which SEW blamed on cold weather and Storm Goretti.

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Water supplies return to three Kent villages

About 18,000 properties hit with water supply issues

South East Water