Thousands of people in Kent are facing water issues going into the weekend as South East Water grapples with its supply during the hot weather.
Businesses have closed and residents have been queuing up at water bottle stations since problems began amid the bank holiday weekend heat.
South East Water’s incident manager Matthew Dean said on Friday that 3,500 customers in the Whitstable area will see supply “return later today”, but that tap water is “likely to remain intermittent across the weekend for all customers in this area”.
Some 3,500 customers in Whitstable started to have their water supply returned to them on Thursday evening, he added.
Elsewhere, 165 customers in Cranbrook are without water because the drinking water storage tanks for the area have “reached a critical level”.
Around 10,500 customers are experiencing low pressure or intermittent supply in Coxheath, Loose, Headcorn, Herne Bay and Benenden areas.
Mr Dean said: “We are starting to see tap water supplies returning to some customers across Kent, however, some are still experiencing water supply issues as a result of incredibly high demand during this heatwave.
“This means for the majority of customers, tap water is intermittent, with supply coming and going throughout the day, with no water or low pressure most frequently occurring at times of the day when demand for water is at its highest – in the morning and evening.”
He said nearly 230,000 litres of water have been delivered to vulnerable customers and also delivered bottled water to settings such as care homes, GP surgeries, pharmacies and dentists.
Nearly 340,000 bottles of water have also been given out at bottled water stations across the county while officials seek to find new locations to open more water points.
It comes as the water company received a credit rating downgrade from one of its two agencies, Moody’s Ratings, on Thursday, putting it in breach of its operating licence with regulator Ofwat.
The firm must have two investment-grade credit ratings as a condition of its licence, and is now in conversations with Ofwat on how to return to compliance.
South East Water said the move related to “the fallout from two high-profile outages and the continued resilience risk the company faces until its medium-to-long-term investment programmes are completed.
Thousands of customers were left unable to access tap water, shower or flush their toilets during the outages between November and January.
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.
South East Water’s chief financial officer, Andrew Farmer, said: “South East Water is implementing a company-wide transformation following network incidents last year to improve our operational performance and deliver on our most important priority, which is a resilient supply network for our customers.”
Ofwat said the downgrade reinforces its position that the financial and operational turnaround of the company is “essential”.
A spokesman said: “The downgrade puts the company in breach of its licence.
“We want to see South East Water urgently address the root causes of its latest downgrade, and we are engaging with them on potential undertakings to secure compliance with its licence.”
The regulator added it was “closely monitoring” the ongoing water supply interruptions affecting Kent customers.
“We have already proposed a £22 million fine following multiple supply interruptions in Kent and Sussex between 2020 and 2023. The company is also subject to an ongoing investigation into customer care during the supply outages in late 2025 and early 2026,” the spokesman said.
In the current outage, South East Water’s Mr Dean continued to ask customers to use water for essential uses only, such as drinking, washing and cooking.
“We are sorry to customers who have had interruptions or low pressure in their water supply and know how frustrating it is, especially in very hot weather,” he said.
“We will continue to do all we can to prevent and resolve the issues.”
Some 619 million litres of water were pumped to customers on Thursday, Mr Dean said, which is higher than average for this time of year.
“On some days during this period of high demand, we have treated and pumped around 100 million litres more than the daily average for May.”
.png?w=600)
