South East Water said about 7,000 properties in Kent were affected on Sunday after an instrument failure at a nearby water treatment works left Tunbridge Wells homes and businesses with low pressure, intermittent supply or no water. The disruption was still into a second day, and bottled water stations stayed open while tankers were used to lift storage levels.
Steve Benton, the company’s incident manager, said: "We are genuinely sorry to all customers currently experiencing low pressure, intermittent supply, or a complete lack of water today (Sunday 19 July)." He added: "This is not the service we aim to provide, and is not the service our customers deserve."
Steve Benton and Tunbridge Wells
Benton said: "The levels in our drinking water storage tanks are improving." He also said: "we are still on target to see water supplies return later this evening at the earliest." South East Water said the disruption was affecting about 7,000 properties in the Tunbridge Wells area, and that bottled water was being delivered to customers on its priority services register.
At the Tesco superstore on Pembury Road in Tunbridge Wells and at Tunbridge Wells Rugby Football Club at St Mark’s recreation ground, bottled water stations were open until 8pm on Sunday. That gave people a fixed place to collect water while crews worked to push more supply into the network.
Kent on Sunday 19 July
The company’s own scale explains why the outage drew attention beyond one town: South East Water supplies about 2.3 million customers in south-east England. Earlier last week, Ofwat ordered it to pay a £30.5m penalty after investigations into previous supply interruptions affecting hundreds of thousands of households across Kent and Sussex.
South East Water had also warned on Friday that there was material uncertainty over its survival, saying it needed fresh financing after taking a £55m hit from outages over the winter. It said it had enough cash to keep going until July 2027, after which more financing would be needed.
For customers in Tunbridge Wells, the immediate question is whether pressure will come back across the whole area before nightfall. South East Water said the system was improving, but some households were still without water on Sunday, and the bottled water stations remained the fallback until the network recovered.
