Major incident declared as thousands without water

Tens of thousands of people in 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 because of the lack of water, along with the public libraries in East Grinstead.

The Queen Victoria Hospital in the town said some appointments may have to be carried out virtually.

Officials said water tankers were delivering supplies, and extra measures were being taken to ensure essential services continued.

Members of hospital staff who are able to work from home are being urged to speak to their line manager.

Speaking to the BBC, Mike Martin, the Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells, said: “We’re in a bizarre situation where we’ve privatised water and they are accountable to no-one.

“I think the chair of South East Water needs to convene the board and get a grip of what’s going on.”

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”.