KCC Leader outlines plans for greater scrutiny of water resilience for Kent
It comes as many across Kent have an intermittent supply
The Leader of Kent County Council (KCC) has announced plans to create a new strategic partnership to oversee the strategic resilience of water across the county, introducing public scrutiny and oversight across water supply, infrastructure and water quality in Kent.
The move follows a further series of water outages affecting residents and businesses across the county in recent days, reinforcing concerns about the resilience of the local water system and building on recent work by Kent County Council’s Scrutiny Committee. A Short-Focused Inquiry into recent supply failures highlighted the significant impact on communities and identified the need for stronger resilience, coordination and accountability across the system.
The strategic group, the Kent Water Resilience Partnership, to be chaired by KCC Leader Linden Kemkaran, would bring together water companies, local authorities, regulators and key partners to focus on long-term planning, performance and public visibility of how water challenges are being addressed.
Meanwhile, this is the latest update from South East Water about the current issues in Kent:
South East Water’s Incident Manager, Matthew Dean, said: “We are starting to see tap water supplies returning to some customers across Kent, however some are still experiencing water supply issues as a result of incredibly high demand during this heatwave.
“This means for the majority of customers, tap water is intermittent, with supply coming and going throughout the day, with no water or low pressure most frequently occurring at times of the day when demand for water is at its highest - in the morning and evening.
“Yesterday (Thursday 28 May) we pumped 619 million litres of water to customers across our region. This continues to be higher than the average for this time of year. On some days during this period of high demand, we have treated and pumped around 100 million litres more than the daily average for May.
“We are doing everything we can to get treated water into our drinking water storage tanks, including using our tankers to support the network and ensuring all available treatment works are running at full capacity. However, some customers will continue to have intermittent water supply until these levels have been restored. This means water may be on and off throughout the day.
“Around 3,500 customers in the Whitstable area started seeing their supplies return yesterday evening (Thursday). These customers may see intermittent supplies throughout the day and over the weekend. The remaining 3,500 customers in the area will see supplies start to return later today. Tap water is likely to remain intermittent across the weekend for all customers in this area.
“Around 165 customers in Cranbrook are currently without supply. This is because the drinking water storage tanks which serve these areas have reached a critical level.
“In addition, there are currently around 10,500 customers experiencing low pressure or an intermittent supply in the Coxheath, Loose, Headcorn, Herne Bay, and Benenden areas.
“In areas where there has been supply interruption - or where we believe issues may occur - we’re delivering bottled water to our vulnerable customers on our Priority Services Register.
“We have delivered 229,464 litres of water to customers on our Priority Services Register and also delivered bottled water to critical care settings such as care homes, GP surgeries, pharmacies and dentists.
“Our fleet of tankers has been working 24/7 putting an extra one million litres of water into the network in areas where demand has been extremely high and to support our stored water reservoirs. So far, we have tankered over 1,753,561 litres of water into the network.
“We have also given out 339,972 bottles of water at our bottled water stations across Kent and continue to identify new locations for other stations to open.
“Additionally, we are supporting the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital in Herne Bay and urgent care unit with a tanker and supporting those with livestock.
“We are continuing to ask customers in supply to use water for essential purposes only - for example drinking, washing and cooking.
“We have bottled water collection stations already set up and are reviewing these locations continuously.
“Our call centre is experiencing high call volumes. Customers can find FAQs, details of bottled water stations and information about locations currently experiencing supply issues via our website.
“We are sorry to customers who have had interruptions or low pressure in their water supply and know how frustrating it is, especially in very hot weather.
“We will continue to do all we can to prevent and resolve the issues.”