Water firm delivers upgrades after supply failures

Critical upgrades have been completed by South East Water after supply failures affected thousands of customers over the winter.

Chief executive David Hinton said that the firm had been implementing its resilience plan after "unacceptable" incidents.

Engineering works completed include key upgrades to the infrastructure in Pembury and Tonbridge, in Kent, he said.

Hinton said that changes were happening behind the scenes, but the investment was being delivered to "mitigate the risk of future supply interruption for tens of thousands of our customers".

In January, up to 30,000 homes across Kent and Sussex lost water supply or had low pressure after Storm Goretti, power cuts and freeze-thaw bursts.

South East Water customers also faced disruption in November and December when about 24,000 households lost supply following a plant failure, which was followed by a boil-water notice lasting several days.

Hinton said that the company had dedicated considerable time and resources in the past three months to implementing its resilience plan.

The upgrades will deliver additional capacity and water quality protection for more than 24,000 households in Tunbridge Wells and the surrounding areas, he said.

He added that the work would strengthen the company's wider network resilience.

Progress listed so far includes new filters installed at Pembury Water Treatment Works and Tonbridge Water Treatment Works and engineering work to a pipeline between Bewl Water and Wadhurst.

A programme has also been launched to increase and optimise the location of spare equipment to reduce supply interruption and lead to quicker repairs.

South East Water serves about 2.3m people across Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire.

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