Supply ‘too reliant’ on one asset, says South East Water boss

The boss of South East Water has said the company is too dependant on individual facilities after a six-day supply failure affected thousands of people in Kent.

About 24,000 properties in and around Tunbridge Wells had no or low pressure tap water from 29 November until supplies returned to most on 4 December. For the next nine days, residents were told to boil the restored tap water before consumption.

A disinfection problem at Pembury Water Treatment Works had caused the failure but there was no evidence supply became infected, said South East Water.

The water company’s chief executive, David Hinton, said the firm was “just too reliant in some areas on one asset”.

Mr Hinton was speaking to the BBC earlier in the week and said the company wants to “do more” at a separate works at Bewl Water reservoir, near Wadhurst in East Sussex, and spend £30m on expanding output capacity.

The proposal would give the company the ability to “rapidly fill the area of Tunbridge Wells, for example, as soon as we see any issue”, said Mr Hinton.

He said this would allow “extra resilience should any other challenges hit any other treatment works” without further draining the reservoir.

“It’s not only for Tunbridge Wells, it’s for the wider parts of Kent as well,” added the chief executive, who has faced calls to resign over the supply issues.

South East Water was one of five companies to contest regulator Ofwat’s latest price controls, which already allowed it to increase an average annual bill from £232 to £274 by 2030.

The firms argued the 36% average price increase for customers in England over the next five years was not enough to deliver better infrastructure.

The Competition and Markets Authority has provisionally agreed that South East Water can increase bills by an extra 4%, pending a final decision in 2026.

Mr Hinton said the Bewl Water proposal was a reason why the company was asking the competition regulator to allow it to raise more money from customers.

South East Water suspects “something to do with the level” of water at its Pembury reservoir contributed to the supply failure but the firm wants to “do a full investigation”, he said.

The company introduced hosepipe restrictions in July for Kent and Sussex customers after dry weather earlier in 2025.

The Drinking Water Inspectorate said it was investigating the Tunbridge Wells loss of supply incident.