Water Supply in Kent

Debate between Derek Twigg and Tom Tugendhat

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

I assure you that will not be a problem, Mr Twigg, despite my known verbosity. Sadly, the Minister has heard many of my points before. However, I am grateful that she is here, as whatever any of us have said about South East Water, the one thing that unites us is knowing that she is doing her absolute damnedest. She, through her Department, has been absolutely brilliant. Wherever we sit, it is good to see her here. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) on securing this debate. Funnily enough, I applied for a debate on this topic—he won on this one—but I will still not speak for the whole eight minutes.

This is not the first time we have been here, nor the first time we have had a water outage in Kent, as we have heard from other hon. Members. By my records, this is the fifth major South East Water outage to hit the community I am lucky enough to represent since the start of last year. We heard that there were water shortages this winter because it was too cold, and we heard that there were water shortages this summer because it has been too hot. Frankly, South East Water is the Goldilocks company: it will deliver water only when everything is just right.

The common denominator is clearly not the temperature, so what is it? Obviously, the answer is South East Water. Edenbridge and the surrounding areas, which are part of the community I represent, are served by SES Water, and the situation is completely different. Despite remarkably similar—in fact, almost identical—weather to that which can be found a few metres over the border in South East Water’s area, we have not had a single outage—that is remarkable, isn’t it?

Although much of the focus over the winter was understandably on Tunbridge Wells, and this time it has been on Whitstable and the areas around Ashford, in reality an outage could happen anywhere. Each time we have had a water outage, a different community has been affected. Across the five outages I have experienced, there were issues in north Tonbridge, south Tonbridge, Penshurst, Plaxtol, Mereworth, Offham, Platt, West Peckham, Wrotham, Addington and Trosley. Each time, it has seemed to catch South East Water by surprise, and its response has always taken too long.

Last week, my right hon. Friend the Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) secured an urgent question in the Chamber on this topic, during which I said that South East Water is the worst company I have come across in my 11 years as an MP. I am delighted to say that many people have been in touch on social media to confirm their own impressions of the company, so I can represent that as the view of the whole constituency.

Here is why: South East Water simply does not know where the problems are coming from. It is constantly astonished that it is expected to deliver water—it is almost as though it thought its job was merely to rake in the bills. Now, why has this happened, and how will it recover? It causes so many issues that it is impossible to trust any information that it gives during an outage. Usually, we hear directly from residents first.

Let me explain what happened just a few weeks ago in my own community. At 9 o’clock on 28 May, residents at the top of Mereworth lost water. There was no communication at all from South East Water, and nothing on its website. Very late at night, water bottles arrived and were apparently made available only to those on the priority services register. Actually, many of those on the register did not get them. It was only because of an extremely assiduous local councillor, Sarah Hudson, that any of them were picked up and delivered to local residents. It is fantastic that we have such a great local councillor, but we cannot rely on local councillors every night and every time South East Water fails.

It took until Saturday evening for water supplies to be delivered to Mereworth, 36 hours after the water was lost. Again, it was local councillors, this time Matt Boughton and Sarah Hudson, who facilitated and unloaded the delivery in a pub car park for residents to use. Even worse, come Sunday it was established that Mereworth did not have enough water. It just could not be pumped to the properties. Why? Because the booster had failed twice at Bough Beech reservoir. Why did it fail? The view of residents is that it is in the wrong place.

I have offered South East Water the chance to take me round to see why that did not work, and to explain it with its engineers. But guess what? It said no. Worse than that, exactly the same issue happened in February, and many of the same properties were without water for the same reason. The alternative provision of water was just as slow. Nothing had changed. How do we stop that happening again? There are things that this company needs to do urgently. Some of it has started, including getting rid of the chairman and the chief executive, but it also needs to improve the list of potential bottled water stations.

There is still much more to do. South East Water’s business continuity plan is a joke. Its staff are not empowered to develop local knowledge of each town and village and how to establish the best responses. Given the sheer number of communities affected, one would hope it had started yesterday, but it has never started at all.

South East Water also needs to be bolder and braver. It needs to be forthright about the fragility of our water system. It needs to be clear about its inability to serve our community. I am pleased that has started, and that it has objected to the Government’s housing target for Tonbridge and Malling’s local plan. That is the right thing to do because, despite many of us wanting more homes in our area, if the water supply to current households cannot be guaranteed, how on earth can we supply 20,000 more households across Tonbridge and Malling by 2042?

I had to debate this in this very room in March, and we debated it in the main Chamber only a few years ago. In the debate with Ministers from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, it was very clear that the planning needed to happen. Either the supply of water has to increase dramatically or the housing targets have to be reduced. I know the council is directly engaged with the water delivery taskforce, but I understand that the promised position statement has not materialised—certainly not to the standard that Tonbridge and Malling borough council needs. That will leave the council with no choice. It will have to stand against the Government’s housing targets.

The Government seem to have no answers for the simple issue that their housing targets for Kent are way in excess of what South East Water can provide. I once again thank the Minister for her hard work. It is very gratefully received, but there are many challenges ahead.

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

The Opposition spokespeople will probably have around six and a half minutes. That will give time for the Minister to wind up and, of course, for the mover of the motion to reply.