Tunbridge Wells businesses respond to South East Water
The Water company CEO has faced scrutiny from MPs and the community, but can't promise there won't be another outage
Last updated 15th Apr 2026
Businesses in Tunbridge Wells have told us they're concerned for potential future water outages, after South East Water failed to promise they wouldn't happen again while being questioned in Parliament yesterday.
One business impacted heavily was The Kitchen Table, who were forced to close their doors for eight days during the outage.
Manager Rosemary Willis told us: "Financially it impacted us, but more to the point it impacted our customers.
"Because we were a mental health charity and it's mainly regulars that that that come in.
"So it's the impact on them of having us close was bigger than the financial one."
The Kitchen Table has since received compensation for the incident, but still worry that another incident could be damaging to the wellbeing of their regulars. Wills added:
"I must admit I still have a lot of bottled water stacked up in my bathroom. I'm not getting rid of that.
"It is a worry that with so much building going on in the town, how South East Water will cope unless they actually do some major improvements to their systems."
While Charlie Moore and Wendy Pete, owner and manager of Charlie's Kitchens, said:
"It wasn't great. We adapted quite quickly to opening as a shop only with an insulated sink and closing the toilets to customers, but it was I was really frightened. You know, the boil notice, getting everything right was really quite intimidating. And also people around were obviously worried about what was going on.
"We kept a lot of bottled water in because a lot of customers and staff were still worried about drinking the water from the tap."
They added that while their staff were a mix of paid and volunteers, all were affected personally by the shortage, making it difficult to book shifts.
When talking about the possibly of another outage they said:
"It is a massive worry. It's a huge worry. I mean, it was really difficult washing things, rinsing with bottled water, boiling. We constantly had water boiling on the hob. It made things quite dangerous and it's a worry that it'll happen again."
They called for clearer communication from South East Water going forward, mentioning how many were uncertain and even now still felt unsafe drinking from taps after the ordeal.
David Hinton, South East Water CEO, said: “We apologise unreservedly to all our customers for the unacceptable water outages experienced in December and January. We recognise the serious impact this has had on our customers and know that we fell short of what is expected of us.
“In recognition of this, I have made the decision not to accept any bonus for the 2025/2026 year.
“We are taking direct action to change the way supply interruptions are managed through a programme of engineering works and accelerated operational changes. We started a six-month programme of works that will reduce the risk of network outages, and the operational changes we are implementing will improve customer experience in the event that future outages occur.
“Our work to date includes improvements to water treatment works, upgrades to pipelines and increased spare stock levels and will deliver additional capacity and water quality protection to over 24,000 households across Pembury and Tunbridge Wells.
“We are focused on delivering our long-term business plan, the most ambitious we have ever produced, designed to improve operational resilience while keeping customer bills affordable.
“Customers can be assured that we are working at pace to complete our full programme of works and will be keeping them updated on our progress.”
South East Water also added that they would continue to provide compensation for businesses impacted by the Pembury outage in the time leading up to Christmas, until the end of May.