South East Water says it is 'making improvements'

Progress has been made towards reducing the risk of future supply issues and transforming customer support during interruptions, South East Water (SEW) has said.

The beleaguered water company announced it had recruited more staff to both prevent, and strengthen its response to, supply disruption.

It revealed final tests were under way at the Bewl Water Treatment Works, which it said would bring extra supply capacity to 46,000 customers in the Tunbridge Wells and Crowborough areas.

SEW chief executive David Hinton and chairman Chris Train resigned earlier this month following a damning report that called the firm's leaders an "unaccountable clique".

The report by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee said Hinton and SEW's board had not addressed "multiple and ongoing failures".

Some 24,000 customers in Kent and East Sussex faced supply disruption in November and December, which SEW blamed on an issue at a treatment works.

Weeks later., up to 30,000 households faced days of water chaos.

One resident likened the situation to "Armageddon" with people unable to shower, wash dishes, flush their toilets or do the laundry.

At the time, SEW said cold weather and Storm Goretti had caused the disruption.

Businesses told the BBC they lost tens of thousands of pounds due to the outages, while schools and some medical services were disrupted.

Bills for SEW customers increased by 7% from April, bringing the average yearly bill to £324 for 2026/27 - up from £303 the year before.

In an update published earlier, SEW said it had completed a comprehensive review at all its relevant water treatment works which had produced a list of improvement actions to ensure "lessons are learned".

The water company said it had also signed a new contract with Water Direct to enhance its support of vulnerable customers on its priority services register.

• Watch: South East Water Crisis Special

It has also developed an internal app for bottled water stations, which it said would enable its teams to predict when stations required restocking, so it could respond proactively.

Douglas Whitfield, SEW water supply director, said: "Today's update demonstrates our commitment to learning from incidents and making lasting improvements to our operations."

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