Regulator investigating South East Water after supply cut to thousands of homes

South East Water (SEW) is being investigated by regulator Ofwat after repeated outages since November have left tens of thousands of households and businesses across Kent and Sussex without drinking water.

The news came after the government asked the watchdog to review the company's licence.

With some properties entering a sixth day without water, the watchdog said it was investigating whether SEW had breached its licence conditions by failing to meet customer service standards obligations or by offering appropriate support to those affected.

In November and December, Tunbridge Wells suffered a sustained outage, with 24,000 properties in and around the Kent town left without drinkable water for almost two weeks.

Ofwat is already looking into SEW's supply resilience to assess whether it has failed to develop and maintain an efficient water supply systems, which is ongoing.

Lynn Parker, Ofwat senior director for enforcement, said the last six weeks had 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."

It is the regulator's first investigation into a potential breach of the customer-focused licence condition.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Wednesday that ministers were holding emergency daily meetings over the ongoing SEW outage after a number of schools in Kent and Sussex were forced to close due to the outage.

On Tuesday, Ofwat said it was concerned that 23,000 properties were still affected by outages across the counties after Kent County Council declared a major incident the previous day.

SEW blamed power cuts and burst pipes caused by Storm Goretti overnight between Friday and Saturday last week for the disruption to services.

SEW said on Wednesday morning that supplies had been restored to 8,000 properties across the two counties, but later said the total was 16,000.

However, it did confirm that the 6,500 properties in Tunbridge Wells that had been on a "boosted system" had lost supplies for the day.

In a statement, SEW incident manager Matthew Dean supplies "have now been returned to 15,000 properties in East Grinstead and supplies should be returned to the remaining 1,500 properties tonight [Wednesday].

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On its website, the firm said it was "extremely sorry to all customers who currently have no water or low pressure," along with details of affected areas and locations of six bottled water stations, three in each county.

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