00:00What was the real cause of this problem and what are they doing to fix it?
00:04That's the question on everyone's lips at this public meeting in Tunbridge Wells.
00:10A week on from outages that closed schools and businesses
00:13and left 30,000 homes across Kent without running water for days on end.
00:20There's many, many businesses, we're talking hundreds and hundreds,
00:23which have lost tens of thousands of pounds because it's one, two, three thousand a day
00:26and it's just devastating.
00:28On one occasion, I had to cancel my morning activity
00:31and drive my kids down to East Point so they could have water at my parents' place down there.
00:36And so, unfortunately, it's been a nightmare, really.
00:40There's been real anger in this room tonight.
00:43More than a hundred people turning out, demanding answers from Southeast Water
00:48who aren't here in attendance.
00:51This town really has had enough in terms of the way they've been treated
00:55by this truly appalling company.
00:57And the message to Southeast Water from this meeting is
01:00you need to up your game, you need to invest in infrastructure
01:04and you need to not let us down again because we will be watching you.
01:09Southeast Water say the company was investigating what happened in January
01:14and that it's too early to confirm what went wrong,
01:18though they have promised a public meeting in the future.
01:21This is not the first time water shortages have broken out in the borough.
01:26December saw chaos before Christmas and similar outages happened back in 2022.
01:33Everybody's saying, this can't surely be happening again.
01:37This is impossible.
01:38You know, so where now, what seems to have happened is
01:41everybody has lost complete faith in everything.
01:46They may not be here tonight,
01:48but Southeast Water will still have to face tough questions
01:52from Tunbridge Wells councillors on Monday
01:55when they're grilled by the borough's overview and scrutiny committee.
02:00Until then, those expecting answers for a month of misery
02:05will be left high and dry.
02:08Olly Leader in Tunbridge Wells.
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