MP demands water boss resigns after thousands in Tunbridge Wells without water for three days

An MP has called for the boss of South East Water to resign after thousands of homes, as well as many businesses in Tunbridge Wells, have been left without water for a third day in a row.

Mike Martin, the Liberal Democrat MP for the Kent town, branded the situation “an utter disgrace”, and said vulnerable and elderly people were suffering as a direct consequence of the “failure of leadership” shown by the water company’s chief executive, David Hinton.

South East Water confirmed that supply problems in the Tunbridge Wells area were caused by a fault at the local Pembury Water Treatment Works.

The plant was forced to shut down on Saturday night after a “bad chemical batch” disrupted operations, leaving local drinking water storage tanks running low.

The company says the facility has now resumed normal service, but has warned supplies won’t be running normally again until Tuesday, as it slowly repressurises the system and deals with airlocks in pipes.

As many as 23,000 homes and premises have been without water, and South Eastern Water has set up bottled water distribution points.

South East Water’s incident manager, Matthew Dean, told The Independent: “I’m very sorry to all our customers in Tunbridge Wells who remain without water or have low pressure tonight.

“More than 5,000 properties have had their supplies restored already, with more anticipated to see their drinking water return throughout the night and into tomorrow morning [Tuesday]. The number of properties currently without water is around 18,000.

“As water supplies return, customers may experience discolouration. This is normal and happens when naturally occurring deposits, which settle and build up within our network of water mains over time, are disturbed.”

Mr Dean added: “We are continuing to move water around our network and have tankered more than 5 million litres of water into the town to keep as many customers in supply as possible and have handed out more than 369,000 litres of bottled water.”

Speaking to reporters in pouring rain, Mr Martin repeatedly called for Mr Hinton’s resignation, saying the company hadn’t learned lessons after a six-day cut to water supplies in 2022.

“Dave Hinton, the CEO of South Eastern Water, who earns half a million pounds a year, must resign,” Mr Martin told the BBC. “This is a total failure of leadership. This has happened before – in 2022 we had six days without water, and he promised us in public, and to me, in private, that lessons would be learned around crisis management, around communications and around resilience. All of that turned out to be completely false. This is a leadership issue and he must resign now.”

He added: “We’ve had vulnerable people unable to self-catheterise, we’ve had care homes without water, we’ve had people queuing for hours. The town has been gridlocked, businesses have been closed, restaurants have lost thousands of pounds. This is an utter disgrace. He must resign.”

Asked about the calls for Mr Hinton’s resignation, Mr Dean told The Independent: “Our focus is entirely on returning supplies to our customers as soon as possible.

“Once we have returned supplies to all customers, a thorough investigation will take place into what happened.”