About 10,000 Kent and Sussex properties without water overnight

About 10,000 properties across Kent and Sussex continued to have no water supply overnight.

South East Water (SEW) said some customers might not see supplies return until Friday after issues first began on Saturday in the wake of Storm Goretti and a power cut at a pumping station.

The company said it would be using 26 tankers to pump water directly into its network while working “around the clock” to fix leaks and bursts.

It comes after the prime minister said the situation, which affected 30,000 customers at the height of the problems, was “clearly totally unacceptable” and asked regulator Ofwat to review the company’s licence.

As of 17:30 GMT on Wednesday, SEW had implemented a new recovery plan for Tunbridge Wells that involved keeping local booster pumps switched off for a further 36 hours.

The aim was that customers would wake up to a consistent supply by Friday morning.

SEW said its local drinking water storage tanks had not refilled at the speed required, so it had to extend the “outage” to allow it to recover fully.

Speaking on Wednesday night, incident manager Desmond Brown said supplies had returned to 15,500 properties in East Grinstead and the company was hoping the remaining 1,000 impacted in the area would see their water return overnight.

There was also a separate issue in the Loose and Coxheath areas on Wednesday evening that impacted about 2,000 properties.

Bottled water is being delivered to customers on its priority services register who are most in need.

Water regulator Ofwat said it was concerned about the situation amid calls for it to take action again SEW.

On Monday, Kent County Council leader Linden Kemkaran wrote on X that a “major incident” had been declared.

SEW has been contacted for more information.