00:00This is Southeast Water's new treatment facility in Ellsford.
00:04A multi-million pound investment that the company says will help secure suppliers for the future,
00:09even as thousands of customers remain under a hosepipe ban.
00:13And I got a sneak peek inside.
00:16Now you might be wondering why I'm wearing this high-vis jacket.
00:20Well right now I'm inside Southeast Water's brand new 50 million pound investment water treatment facility.
00:26Part of a long-term investment plan to improve water resilience across Kent.
00:32But will a facility like this actually make a difference to those thousands of customers
00:36who experienced water loss and shortages the past few months?
00:40What we've done here is just one part of a jigsaw of the investment and the resilience improvements that we
00:45need.
00:45Because what we need to be able to do is to be able to supply customers for more than one
00:48treatment works
00:49or for more than one network so that if we have problems or events or interruptions in one area,
00:54customers don't see an interruption to supply, we can just reroute the water to a different part of the network.
00:58And why should customers trust what you say when there's a host by bands going on at the moment?
01:02We are in this period and this time of weather extreme and they do put infrastructure under stress.
01:07So I'm sure that the investment that we've got is going to improve that.
01:10But it is a challenging operating environment and hopefully by demonstrating what we are doing,
01:14customers can get the confidence that we are trying to put things right.
01:17This facility treats water that comes straight from the ground,
01:20so it's safe for people to consume when it comes out of their taps.
01:23It's estimated that it will pump out the equivalent of 250,000 bathtubs a day,
01:28but only to the local area around Ellsford.
01:31And over their five-year plan, they say they will invest £2.1 billion in infrastructure
01:37to strengthen the county's water resilience.
01:40That includes resilience for the Tunbridge Wells area,
01:42upgrading and modernising the treatment works in the areas that supply that region.
01:46And this butler is part of that wider package.
01:48You talk about resilience there and customers, when they think of resilience or they understand resilience,
01:52they don't look at investment announcements.
01:54They look at whether or not water is coming out of the tap, which there hasn't been.
01:57Why should customers trust that this will be a major turning point
02:00after the recent failures they've been experiencing?
02:02It's been a really tough time for our customers.
02:04We're really sorry about that.
02:05It's not the level of service we want to give.
02:07We are doing short-term resilience and short-term changes
02:10to make sure that we can mitigate any issues in the short term, improve our response.
02:14But that's why infrastructure investment does take time to put in place.
02:17We are trying to do that as quickly and as efficiently as we can,
02:20and things will start to improve year on year.
02:22The host pipe ban is still in place in Aylesford and other areas around Kent.
02:26So while South East Water says that future investments are about preparing for future demand
02:31and unpredictable weather,
02:33for customers still unable to water their gardens,
02:36this long-term investment may offer little immediate relief.
02:40Nayla Mahmood for KMTV in Aylesford.
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