After water supply issues in Tunbridge Wells had ceased back in December of last year, many residents thought it would be left in 2025, but in pockets of the county residents have yet again been seeing their taps run dry.
00:00We began today with 11 interruptions across the South East Water Network.
00:04At last check, there were 13.
00:06The series of outages across Tunbridge Wells, Maidstone and other localised areas has hit national headlines.
00:13I'm back, back in Tunbridge Wells, barely a month since the last bout of issues with South East Water.
00:18This time, however, the issues are much more widespread.
00:21It's 30,000 households across Kent and Sussex which have been without water.
00:26I'm here at Tunbridge Wells Rugby Club and just handing out bottled water to those affected, something residents here are all too used to.
00:34While there in Tunbridge Wells, I learnt the South East Water team had actually run out of bottled water,
00:39with the only other station being all the way over in Ashford.
00:42Luckily enough, we've got some little bit of water stored up, so we were able to use that to make tea and stuff like that.
00:50But the biggest problem when you haven't got water is how do you wash?
00:55You can't clean your hands.
00:57Fortunately, we have a reasonable supply of bottled water, so we get by.
01:05But it's all very inconvenient and I have to say very third world.
01:09All customers pay a standing charge.
01:13That standing charge isn't for the water, it's for the infrastructure to provide the water.
01:19So where is the money going?
01:21Why is it being left?
01:23There are woefully inadequate local MPs not dealing with it because if it was a one-off occurrence, you can accept it.
01:33But this has been coming down the track for so long now, the previous government and the current government aren't demanding or being tenacious enough to ensure that we get what we're paying for.
01:46The first news of a new wave of issues arose shortly after South East Water CEO David Hinton was questioned in the Commons by the EFRA committee.
01:53It was an ironic twist in a series of growing frustrations with the water company.
01:57It comes as Rosie Duffield, the MP for Canterbury, is the latest to join the list of South East MPs calling for the resignation of the South East Water boss.
02:05They joined Tunbridge Wells MP Mike Martin, who called for the boss to step down back when issues first arose in his constituency in December.
02:12Once we've got water restored, then we're going to deal with South East Water.
02:16We're going to move into accountability mode and there are a number of things that we're going to be looking at around resilience, crisis planning, communications.
02:24Really, there's been a leadership failure.
02:26South East Water's incident manager Matthew Dean said,
02:29We're sorry to our customers across Kent and Sussex who are experiencing issues with their drinking water supply, including no water, intermittent supply interruptions or low pressure.
02:39Following the recent cold weather and a subsequent breakout of leaks and bursts across Kent and Sussex, our drinking water storage tanks are running very low.
02:47We're incredibly sorry to all customers and businesses who've been impacted by this and we're doing all we can to restore supplies as soon as possible.
02:54And as the pressure goes up from the commons, people impacted here in Kent are hoping they see it from their taps too.
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