{"id":283324,"date":"2026-02-10T05:32:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T05:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/283324\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T05:32:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T05:32:13","slug":"water-shortages-in-tunbridge-wells-cost-south-east-water-30m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/283324\/","title":{"rendered":"Water shortages in Tunbridge Wells cost South East Water \u00a330m"},"content":{"rendered":"

The chief executive of South East Water has admitted that an incident that left tens of thousands of people without water in Kent and Sussex cost the company almost \u00a330 million. <\/p>\n

The figure, revealed by David Hinton, at a meeting with frustrated customers, is the first estimate of the financial hit from the 13-day crisis that affected Tunbridge Wells<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

The troubled company again left thousands of properties without water<\/a> last month, suggesting that the cost to the firm could be tens of millions of pounds higher.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Thousands of people were left without water for 13 days last year<\/p>\n

PETER NICHOLLS\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Hinton, who has been called on to resign by local MPs, came under fire at a meeting with customers last week for \u201cinconsistent and conflicting\u201d updates and poor communication. <\/p>\n

\u2022 What is South East Water\u2019s boss doing to solve the crisis?<\/a><\/p>\n

The company admitted that during last year\u2019s incident, which saw schools shut, nurseries closed and dialysis patients relocated to London, the firm moved the estimated time for restoration seven times. <\/p>\n

Rob Crumbie, the firm\u2019s head of communications, said that was \u201cnot acceptable\u201d. <\/p>\n

One customer said: \u201cIt seems to me, with regards to communication, you didn\u2019t really have a strategy and you lost the room.\u201d <\/p>\n

Organised by the Consumer Council for Water (CCW), the meeting was the first held by water consumer panels established after government reforms brought in last year. <\/p>\n

While Crumbie apologised to customers at the meeting, he blamed a \u201ctricky media environment\u201d for making it hard to communicate to residents. <\/p>\n

Hinton disputed claims by the chief inspector of the Drinking Water Inspectorate<\/a> that the problems at one of its water treatment works last year could have been avoided. MPs have recalled Hinton to parliament to discuss why his reasons for the works\u2019 issues were different. <\/p>\n

\"Dave<\/p>\n

David Hinton, the company\u2019s chief executive<\/p>\n

STEVE FINN PHOTOGRAPHY<\/p>\n

Hinton said: \u201cWhere we were different was only on one thing and that was the foreseeability of this thing happening.\u201d He said the reason a chemical used to remove impurities from the water had stopped working was because the spring-fed pond it drew from had become too cold. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about \u00a320,000 to put an extra piece of coagulant on the site and this event has cost us nearly \u00a330 million. So if I could have foreseen it, I think we would have spent the \u00a320,000,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hinton, who received a bonus of \u00a3115,000 last year and has not ruled out taking it again, was told by customers that he should financially suffer because of the recent disruption. \u201cI personally think shareholders and, sorry, bosses should take a hit on this,\u201d one told him.<\/p>\n

The chief executive admitted that his firm\u2019s handling of social media was probably naive. \u201cSocial media is definitely a learning for us,\u201d he said, referring to how initial statements it made about the coagulant led to misleading claims online.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt probably is naivety from our point of view, but it grew massive chemical contamination legs, which is not what we wanted to be out there at all, because it wasn\u2019t a contamination thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The company has launched its own review into what went wrong. However, customers at the meeting criticised its independence after staff said it would be run by a non-executive director rather than an external consultant. <\/p>\n

South East Water is drawing up an action plan that is due to be published on March 11. <\/p>\n

A transcript of last week\u2019s meeting, seen by The Times, shows measures include a \u201ctraffic light app\u201d that will show whether bottled water stations have supplies, after executives admitted there had been hour-long gaps without bottles at some sites. <\/p>\n

Other pledges include better checks that vulnerable people have received bottle water deliveries, such as staff knocking on doors. \u201cWe know we missed some customers because they told us we missed them,\u201d Hinton said.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for South East Water said: \u201cWe continue to engage transparently with our local communities, including through well-established consumer bodies, such as CCW. We\u2019re working hard to introduce longer-term fixes for the issues which led to recent outages.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are focused on understanding what went wrong and why as part of delivering long-term water resilience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chief executive of South East Water has admitted that an incident that left tens of thousands of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-283324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}