The disruption and uncertainty have been unacceptable, especially for residents, businesses and vulnerable households who rely on a consistent water supply.
We are clear that this is not a party-political issue. We fully endorse councillors of all parties working together to ensure that South East Water is properly held to account for its performance. Residents deserve answers, transparency, and above all confidence that this situation will not continue.
South East Water has indicated that this week’s outages, affecting around 6,500 homes, are the result of burst water mains caused by cold weather. These failures have drained local storage and disrupted supplies while repair works are ongoing.
For that reason, councillors will be directly questioning South East Water representatives when they attend Council later this month. We will be pressing them on why the system was allowed to become so vulnerable, what immediate steps are being taken to improve resilience, and how they intend to prevent a repeat of these failures.
We will also be challenging them on a wider and critical issue: how this infrastructure can realistically cope with significant additional housing growth, including the proposed Esquire development on Frant Road. Residents are rightly asking how hundreds of new homes can be supported when the existing water supply is already proving unreliable. This is a question that South East Water must answer clearly and convincingly.
If you would like to share your thoughts on the recent outages, please do complete the text box below. This will help shape our questioning to South East Water.
Update from South East Water: 9/1/2025 - 4pm.
'To completely stabilise the network, we need to gradually increase the amount of water in our storage water tanks. This means customers in your supply area will experience some interruptions to their water supply until the storage tank has a sufficient surplus of water. We expect the levels to be stable by Tuesday 13 January.'
If you would like to personally email:
Consumer Council for Water, DEFRA, Chris Train is on [email protected]
Kent Local Resilience Forum is at [email protected]
Quality Care Commission is at [email protected]
Link to update from AquAlerter - https://aqualerter.southeastwater.co.uk/interruption/139615