Beleaguered South East Water apologises as thousands again face supply issues
South East Water (SEW) has confirmed that thousands of residents across the City continue to face serious water supply problems, with some areas experiencing “total water shortages”.
Nearly 7,000 properties around the Tunbridge Wells area were affected by low pressure, intermittent or no water supply, the utility company announced on Saturday. This widespread outage was attributed to “device failure” at a nearby water treatment plant.
On Sunday morning, SEW stated that it was “on target” for supplies to start returning in the evening “at the earliest” and apologized to all affected customers.
SEW incident manager Steve Benton said: “We sincerely apologize to all our customers who experienced low pressure, intermittent supply or a complete lack of water today (Sunday, July 19).”
“This is not the service we aim to provide and it is not the service our customers deserve.”
He added: “Levels in our drinking water storage tanks are improving, but we want to ensure this is a steady and continuous flow when supplies return to customers.
“To do this, we must allow our storage tanks to be filled to a higher level than they are currently; we still aim to see water supplies restored later this evening at the earliest.”
Bottled water stations installed 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 at St Marks Recreation Ground.
The company said it was using tankers to increase drinking water storage levels to support affected areas and was distributing bottled water to customers on the priority services register.
Earlier this week the water company was ordered to pay £30.5 million following investigations by industry watchdog Ofwat following previous supply disruptions that affected hundreds of thousands of households in Kent and Sussex.
Ofwat said the compensation package concludes three investigations into the supplier and includes a previously proposed £22 million fine for water supply failures affecting more than 286,000 people between 2020 and 2023.
The regulator launched a second investigation earlier this year following further supply disruptions in Tunbridge Wells and across Kent and Sussex between November and January, leaving nearly 70,000 homes without water.
The third investigation followed the downgrade of SEW’s credit rating by Moody’s in May; This meant that the firm had violated its license terms.
SEW warned in its annual report this week that it needed to secure new funding to stay afloat after suffering a £55 million loss from disruptions over the winter.
The water supplier to around 2.3 million customers in the South East of England said it was in talks with lenders to agree a new credit facility.
It has enough money to last through July 2027, but said it would need to get more funding “shortly.”
