Thousands of households in Whitstable are facing severe water supply issues amid a heatwave, after South East Water announced that local storage reservoirs had reached a "critical level". Around 8,000 customers in the Kent town were initially affected, with images showing long queues for bottled water at a local Sainsbury’s.
The utility company has urged customers to use water for essential purposes only – for drinking, washing and cooking – following persistent supply problems since the hot bank holiday weekend. The disruption has prompted Kent County Council to announce increased public scrutiny of water supply, quality, and infrastructure across the county, citing residents who are "fed up" with recent outages.
Steve Benton, an incident manager for South East Water, stated that while tap water supply for Whitstable is expected to return later on Thursday, it may be "intermittent over the weekend".
He also confirmed that 7,000 customers are currently experiencing low pressure or intermittent supply in areas including Tankerton, Ashford, Ulcombe, Cranbrook, Coxheath, and Headcorn. An additional 7,000 customers are "at risk of experiencing some supply loss today".
Mr Benton said: “Customers across Kent are still experiencing water supply issues due to extremely high demand during the very hot weather.
“We are doing everything we can to get treated water into our storage reservoirs, but some customers will continue to have intermittent water supply until these levels have been restored.”
According to the water company it pumped 628 million litres of water to customers on Wednesday, and over the weekend it treated and pumped more than 100 million litres more than the daily average for May.
Mr Benton apologised to customers and said “we will continue to do all we can to prevent and resolve the issues”.
Earlier this month South East Water’s chief executive David Hinton announced his plans to step down just a week after the group’s chairman Chris Train quit following a scathing report by MPs, who said they had “no confidence” in the company’s leadership.
The scrutiny came after thousands of customers were left unable to access tap water, shower or flush their toilets during the outages between November and January.
On Thursday, Kent County Council said it will set up a new “strategic partnership” to oversee water resilience in the county following the latest outages.
The Kent Water Resilience Partnership will be chaired by council leader Linden Kemkaran and include water companies, local authorities, regulators and others to focus on planning, performance and show publicly how water issues are being addressed.
Ms Kemkaran said: “People across Kent are fed up with being left without water or having their supply disrupted, sometimes for days at a time, and not getting clear answers about what’s gone wrong or when it will be fixed.
“That’s simply not good enough.”
The council boss said while the authority does not have direct power over water companies, “we do have a responsibility to stand up for Kent”.
She added: “At the moment, responsibility is too fragmented and there is no single place where the whole system is being looked at.
“This partnership intends to change that. It will shine a light on the issues affecting Kent and make sure there is clear, open scrutiny of how those responsible are responding.”
The move follows calls from the Green group at Kent County Council for the authority to declare a “Kent Water Supply Emergency” and create a plan to rectify the situation if water supply in the county is not fit for purpose.
Green councillor Stuart Heaver, representing a Whitstable ward, said on Wednesday: “It is unbelievable that once again my residents are without water. This madness just gets worse.
“We need to find out if our water supply is fit for purpose and resolve this.”
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