Regulator launches probe into South East Water after tens of thousands left without supplies
The regulator today announced it had launched a probe into whether the supplier had complied with its customer service standards obligations and offered appropriate support to affected customers during supply failures.At least 17,000 properties were left without water earlier this week following this latest outage.Tunbridge Wells suffered a sustained outage in November and December, with 24,000 properties in and around the Kent town left without drinkable water for almost two weeks.Read more: Taps 'won’t turn back on for days', warns MP as 25,000 homes hit by water shortageLynn Parker, Ofwat senior director for enforcement, said: “The last six weeks have been miserable for businesses and households across Kent and Sussex with repeated supply problems.“We know that this has had a huge impact on all parts of daily life and hurt businesses, particularly in the run-up to the festive period.“That is why we need to investigate and to determine whether the company has breached its licence condition.”South East Water’s incident manager Matthew Dean said on Wednesday: “Once again, we are very sorry to all our customers who have been affected.“We know and understand how difficult going without water for such a long period of time is and how difficult it makes everyday life.”In a similar incident last month, 24,000 properties in and around Tunbridge Wells, Kent, were left without drinkable water for almost two weeks.SEW chief executive David Hinton was grilled by MPs for his company’s handling of that crisis last week.On Tuesday, Alistair Carmichael, chairman of the Parliamentary Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, said he and his colleagues remained “deeply sceptical” about SEW’s version of events presented to MPs last week.He indicated that they plan to recall Mr Hinton and the chairman of SEW, Chris Train, to provide further evidence to the committee.Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells Mike Martin has been calling for Mr Hinton to resign for more than a month.Other politicians have voiced their dissatisfaction as well, and on Tuesday KCC leader Linden Kemkaran said “heads must roll” as a result of the ongoing outages.An SEW spokesperson said: “We have fully complied with the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s request for information to date and we will continue to provide any further information requested.“This will include attending any further meetings that are required.”The company has said supplies will continue to be returned to people in Kent and Sussex throughout the day.The majority of those still affected are in East Grinstead, East Sussex, where approximately 11,500 properties remain without water.Bottled water stations remain in place in Tunbridge Wells, East Grinstead and Maidstone, and location details can be found on SEW’s website.
