Major incident declared as thousands without water

Tens of thousands of people in East Sussex and Kent are starting the working week without water following a weekend of disruption, with the council in Kent declaring a major incident.

South East Water (SEW) said a number of issues were to blame, including Storm Goretti and a power cut at its pumping plant.

It said 14 postcodes were still affected around the East Grinstead, Frant and Tunbridge Wells areas.

Collection points for bottled water have been set up and some customers have been told their supply may not return until Tuesday.

On X, Kent County Council leader Linden Kemkaran said: “A major incident has now been declared on the basis that more households and settings have been impacted in the last 24 hours and because we are putting additional arrangements in place to prepare for further potential disruption.”

Several schools in Kent and Sussex are closed for the day due because of the lack of water.

SEW has apologised to all those affected and said it was delivering water to those on its priority register.

It blamed Storm Goretti and cold weather for the outages in East Grinstead and “essential network changes” for those in Eastbourne.

The issues in Hollingbourne were due, it said, to “neighbouring water companies being unable to give us the bulk supplies of treated water as they normally do”.