Water firm will 'struggle' to supply planned homes

A water company has said it may "struggle" to supply water to thousands of planned new homes in Kent.

The blueprint for 23,000 new properties across Canterbury, Whitstable and Herne Bay is reaching its final stages and councillors have voted to place additional scrutiny on South East Water (SEW).

The water firm has come under pressure in recent months, with confirmation last week that it faces a £22.46m fine for water outages across the county between 2020 and 2023.

At a council meeting earlier in March, SEW's director of operations Douglas Whitfield said the company has told regulators it will "struggle to supply any housing growth above what's included in our water resource management plan".

At a Canterbury City Council (CCC) meeting in February, councillor Naomi Smith proposed a motion to form a new countywide body to scrutinise SEW's performance.

Citing water outages in East Kent in 2025, as well as those affecting Blean and parts of Canterbury in early 2026, the motion described the firm's response as "woefully inadequate".

"Public confidence in South East Water is at an all-time low," she said.

The council voted to look at forming a South East Water stakeholder group, led by CCC and bringing together all local authorities served by the firm, said the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Legally, water firms must provide water to all new homes being built and have to plan in order to do so.

Whitfield said: "Unfortunately, I can't magic new water out of the ground in the short term, so the focus that we're really putting on in the next five years is around smart metering."

The council is reaching the latter stages of its local plan process – the overall strategy identifying the locations of 23,000 new houses in the district up until 2043.

The plan includes proposals for a brand new reservoir at Broad Oak, near Sturry.

SEW unveiled proposals for the £362m facility, a scheme first suggested in the 1970s, for the 200-acre project estimated to hold 5,126 million litres of water and supply up to 22 million litres a day, equivalent to 275,000 full baths.

Whitfield said the Broad Oak Reservoir would "give us some headroom",but was not expected to be up and running until 2035.

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