Water supply issue 'improving' but not yet fixed

An ongoing water supply issue in Kent is improving but has not been "completely fixed" yet, with about 500 properties remaining affected for a sixth day, South East Water has said.

On Wednesday, it said up to 3,000 customers in Whitstable, Seasalter and surrounding areas had no water or low pressure due to the recent heatwave.

While the number of affected homes has reduced, the company's water supply director, Douglas Whitfield, could not promise a total resolution by Tuesday.

He told BBC Radio Kent: "That's certainly what we're hoping [but] I wouldn't like to 100% commit to that because if I do then something else could happen which means that's not the case."

Mr Whitfield said the Seasalter area had seen a "good return to supply" and "all those customers should have their normal mains supply back on now", but there were "intermittent" issues around the Wraik Hill and Yorkletts areas.

"The last area we need to get on is the Wraik Hill area which has benefitted from some boosters which suck water from one of our storage tanks, and they're still currently airlocked," he explained.

The boosters ran for a period on Sunday night, but "tripped off" on Monday morning, he said.

"Water will be injected from a tanker into the area," he said.

Meanwhile, he said a fault on one of the apparatus on the network needed to be repaired and replaced, but it was a complicated process.

"It's a very deep main, encased in concrete, and will require us to isolate that main to do the repair. Obviously we can't do that until supplies are back in," he said.

Two bottled water stations at Sainsbury's on Reeves Way in Chestfield, and at 129C Faversham Road, Seasalter, in Whitstable, remain open on Monday.

Mr Whitfield also promised customers would be compensated in due course.

Apologising for the outage, he said: "This is not the service we want to give to customers... it's been a very challenging week."

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