Water disruption affects thousands across South East

Thousands of residents across Kent and Sussex are without water and could face disruption all weekend, South East Water (SEW) has said.

The company's customers in Maidstone - including "Hollingbourne, right through to Headcorn and the surrounding villages" - have been told there is a problem due to "operational issues" being experienced by Southern Water.

With some customers without supplies since the early hours of Saturday and a total of 4,500 people affected, SEW said it was "working hard to prevent outages and restore service".

Meanwhile, SEW has confirmed that around 16,500 homes in and around East Grinstead in Sussex also have no water or low pressure supplies.

Steve Andrews, incident manager for South East Water, said the low pressure or intermittent supply is "due to an operational issue being experienced at Southern Water, who pump across 20 million litres of treated water per day to help supply these areas".

"This supply has been temporarily turned off," he said.

Without these bulk supplies of treated water, he added that storage reservoirs were "running low".

Southern Water has been contacted for comment.

Earlier this week, a series of burst water mains on SEW's network left thousands without supplies, while the refilling of "treated water storage reservoirs" has been further impacted by the arrival of Storm Goretti on Thursday.

A SEW spokesperson added: "Storm Goretti has affected our ability to treat water at the normal rate.

"Coupled with the outbreak of burst water mains on our network due to the freeze/thaw conditions being experienced across Kent, our drinking water storage levels are running low.

"As a result, some customers in Hollingbourne and the surrounding areas - especially those on higher ground - may experience no water, intermittent supply or low pressure today and throughout the weekend."

SEW said it was currently "moving water from other areas of our network" and "using tankers to inject water directly into it to support demand where possible".

The water company said it had opened a bottle water station at Headcorn Aerodrome and would be delivering bottled water to priority customers.

Maidstone Borough Council has also advised that food businesses without running water "must close" for hygiene reasons.

Meanwhile, residents in Tunbridge Wells were told on Friday they could expect continued disruption to their water supply until Tuesday.

The town's MP, Mike Martin, told the BBC the water going "on and off" made it "quite hard to plan your life".

SEW said that, until its network stabilises, customers could expect normal flow in the mornings, but no water in the afternoons and throughout the evenings.

A spokesperson for SEW explained that Storm Goretti had resulted in "outages at a number of water treatment works sites" and widespread "river water quality issues".

"This is not the level of service we want to provide, but we believe this is the quickest way to return water supplies to normal," they said.

"We expect the levels to be stable by 13 January."

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