Water has been restored to all properties after another outage in Kent over the weekend, South East Water has said.
According to the water company’s incident manager, Matthew Dean, the last 500 properties in Harrietsham, in Maidstone, saw water returned after a leaking main was repaired on Sunday night.
South East Water (SEW) said early on Sunday that around 4,500 properties in Maidstone were experiencing little to no water, along with hundreds more in Tunbridge Wells.
File pic: PA
Mr Dean added water stations were still in place as a precaution, and said “once again, we’re sorry to any customers affected by the supply issues”.
The problem was the latest in a long line of issues for SEW, which faced heavy criticism last week after some 30,000 homes in Kent and West Sussex had a disrupted water supply for six days.
That outage prompted Kent County Council to declare a major incident and water regulator Ofwat to launch a probe into the company.
The regulator added it was investigating whether SEW had breached its licence conditions by failing to meet customer service standards obligations or by offering appropriate support to those affected.
Months before that, in November and December, Tunbridge Wells suffered a sustained outage, with 24,000 properties in and around the town left without drinkable water for almost two weeks.
Residents in and around the area were issued a “boil water notice” at the time.
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Lynn Parker, Ofwat senior director for enforcement, said on Saturday the last six weeks had been “miserable for businesses and households across Kent and Sussex, with repeated supply problems”.
If the regulator decides SEW has breached the conditions and should be stripped of the licence, the supplier could fall into a special administration regime until a new buyer is found.
