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An MP has called the boss south east water Resigning after thousands of homes as well as many businesses tunbridge wellshas been left without Water For the third consecutive day.
Mike Martin, liberal democrat The Kent city’s MP branded the situation “disgraceful” and said vulnerable and elderly people were suffering as a direct result of the “failure”. LeadershipShown by water company chief executive David Hinton.
south east water Confirmed that the 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 operations were disrupted due to a “bad chemical batch”, depleting local drinking water storage tanks.
The company says the facility has now resumed normal service, but warned supplies won’t be running normally again until Tuesday as it gradually depressurizes the system and deals with airlocks in the pipes.
At least 23,000 homes and premises are without water, and South Eastern Water has set up bottled water distribution points.
South East Water incident manager Matthew Dean said Independent: “I’m very sorry to all of our customers in Tunbridge Wells who were left without water or at low pressure tonight.
“Supply to more than 5,000 properties has already been restored, with more expected to have their drinking water restored overnight and by tomorrow morning.” [Tuesday]The number of properties without water currently stands at around 18,000,
“As water supplies return, customers may experience discoloration. This is normal and occurs when naturally occurring deposits, which build up and build up within our water mains network over time, are disturbed.”
Mr Dean said: “We are continuing to deliver water around our network and have dispatched over 5 million liters of water tankers to the city and distributed over 369,000 liters of bottled water to keep supplies supplied to as many customers as possible.”
Speaking to reporters amid heavy rain, Mr Martin repeatedly called for Mr Hinton’s resignation and said the company had not learned its lessons after six days of water supply cuts in 2022.
“Dave Hinton, the CEO of South Eastern Water, who earns half a million pounds a year, should resign,” Mr Martin told the BBC. “This is a complete failure of leadership. This has happened before – we had to spend six days without water in 2022, and he promised us publicly and me privately that lessons would be learned about crisis management, communication and resilience. It all turned out to be a complete lie. This is a leadership issue and he should resign now.”
He added: “We have vulnerable people unable to self-catheterize, we have care homes without running water, we have people standing in queues for hours. The city has been gridlocked, businesses have closed, restaurants have lost thousands of pounds. It’s absolutely disgraceful. He should resign.”
Asked about calls for Mr Hinton’s resignation, Mr Dean said Independent: “Our focus is entirely on returning supplies to our customers as quickly as possible.
“Once we have returned supplies to all customers, there will be a thorough investigation into what happened.”