Anger grows at South East Water CEO as thousands without water ‘until at least the weekend’
Calls for the resignation of South East Water chief executive David Hinton have turned from a trickle to a roar as tens of thousands of homes in Kent and Sussex remain without water for a fourth day in a row and with no clear end in sight to the crisis.
Sir Keir Starmer He was asked to be sent to the armyAn investigation has been launched as the fault occurred just two weeks after another outage in the area affected 24,000 homes in Tunbridge Wells.
Now many of those same people are facing more glitches that won’t be fixed until “at least by the end of the week.” Independent he understands.
South East Water has installed water distribution sites and staff say so Independent Approximately 1,000 cars per hour were arriving to collect bottled water.
Mike Martin, the Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells, who has previously called for Mr Hinton’s resignation, said the government “needs to raise a couple and call for him to go too”.
These calls were backed by Kent County Council leader Linden Kemkaran of Reform UK, who also wrote to South East Water’s board calling for Mr Hinton to be sacked.
Mr Martin told Independentt: “Like all my constituents, I am very angry. We went without water for two weeks in December and now we have it again. Nothing we learned the first time was fully understood this time.”
“There is really poor communication, poor crisis management and everything is a mess.
“I have written to NatWest, which today owns 25 per cent of South East Water, to ask whether this is acceptable.
“It’s simple, Dave Hinton needs to go. The company is besieged by groupthink and they can’t see the full range of problems they face.”
He said the government needed to “go much further” in holding South East Water accountable and said “the government needs to raise a couple and call for it to go”.
Mr Martin told The Independent that the water would be “on and off until at least this weekend”, adding: “Never mind what South East Water says – they don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Not only is the infrastructure depleted, but the leadership is also garbage, and it is this double whammy that is causing all these problems.”
On Tuesday, the Parliamentary Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) committee, where Mr Hinton gave evidence last week, recalled him to parliament after committee chairman Alistair Carmichael said he and his colleagues remained “extremely skeptical” about the water company’s version of events.
Mr Martin said Mr Hinton’s evidence last week amounted to “misleading parliament and belittling the House of Commons”.
Reform England’s Ms Kemkaran said the local situation was “really bad” and went beyond affecting local concerns.
“This is the fourth day people have gone without water,” he said Independent. “The problem is becoming more widespread. One area closing, then opening again, then a different area and another, it’s absolutely appalling. And I’m afraid South East Water’s communications are absolutely abysmal. It’s not good enough.”
“It’s not just ‘can I shower before work’, it also affects agriculture. We have a lot of farms here. I was talking to a dairy farmer who didn’t have water to wash his milking equipment, so he had to throw away all the milk he took from the cows the next morning.”
He added: “Hairdressers can’t remove dead bodies from anyone’s hair. Restaurants and cafes have all had to close their doors. The problem lies in South East Water’s failure to invest and repair infrastructure. Dave Hinton’s position has become completely untenable. He is now missing in action too many times. He needs to go.”
Speaking of calls across the country for water companies to be taken out of private hands and brought back into public ownership, Ms Kemkaran said: “Privatization of services has both positive and negative aspects. One of the disadvantages is that people line their pockets with profits and customers have no choice. There is no competition, so there is no incentive to make the service better… Something needs to change.”
People in the Tunbridge Wells area affected by the current outage are angry at South East Water’s response.
Chrissie Bayley, who runs a beauty salon, said the previous outage meant she had to cancel some clients and the ongoing uncertainty was affecting her business.
“You can’t actually trust water. I have to flush the toilet and let customers go just for a wee. I’ve had to wash people’s faces at Evian. It’s crazy.”
Local resident John Oliver said: Independent the current outage was even more frustrating than the previous one: “Everything is intermittent. Today we had water for 45 minutes. Then it went off, that’s all. Yesterday we had an hour.”
He said, “With that the money stops [Mr Hinton]. His statement to the select committee was very inconsistent. I hope he is dismissed.”
David Ayre, who said he lived “too close by”, said: “We’re not washing it and it’s been going on for too long and the guy who runs it all makes £500,000 a year. I’d like to see him (Mr Hinton) sacked. He needs to be held accountable for his actions.”
Another resident, Niamh Taylor, said Mr Martin was “really fighting our corner” but “to be honest we just want to see (Mr Hinton) fired. We were thinking of getting together and maybe getting lawyers involved. It was disgusting.”
The Independent has contacted South East Water for further comment.
