South East Water: Disruption of Supply

Commons Urgent Question

The following Answer to an Urgent Question was given in the House of Commons on Wednesday 3 June.

“I thank the right honourable gentleman for asking this Question. I will update the House on the water supply disruption in Kent, and I want to begin by expressing my sympathy for those affected by the disruption. Being without water is distressing at any time, but particularly during a period of hot weather, alongside school revision and examinations. This is now the third major outage affecting South East Water customers in recent months, and it is simply not acceptable.

South East Water reported that thousands of customers were impacted by supply disruptions over the course of the incident, and I am pleased that normal water supply has now been restored. I met the interim chair and senior operational staff twice during the course of the incident, including on Sunday, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs team met them daily to hold them to account for the incident and to request that they set out by the end of this week how they will compensate customers.

Water supply disruption causes significant cost to businesses and impacts the most vulnerable in society. I have heard of a 100 year-old lady without water, and a care home in Cranbrook using wet wipes to keep their residents clean. This is simply unacceptable, and the company must take urgent action.

I thank all those working in the Kent local resilience forum, the local authorities, the health and social care partners, and civil servants in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Defra for their hard work to support those affected. I am also grateful to operational staff and volunteers who worked on the ground to restore supplies and provide alternative water.

A reliable supply of clean water is one of the foundations of a healthy, functioning society. The situation demands further bold action to deliver fundamental long-term reform, and that is why we are delivering whole-scale reform to the water sector. Through our clean water Bill, we will create a new single, powerful regulator, giving us for the first time a clear system-wide view of company performance and the tools to intervene more quickly when companies fall short. We will put consumers first by introducing a water ombudsman, ensuring that customers have a stronger voice and clearer routes to redress. We have already passed the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, which introduced the toughest sentencing powers ever applied to lawbreaking water company executives, and introduced powers to ban unjustified bonuses.

It is vital that South East Water and all water companies deliver on improvements to their infrastructure, but most of all, they must continue to improve their ability to maintain water supplies to their customers, whatever the weather”.

My Lords, climate experts are predicting that a super El Niño this autumn could lead to 2027 being the hottest year on record. We know this today, so what exactly are the Government doing now to prepare the country in advance and avoid the disruption to water supplies as seen last spring? There can be no excuses next year that the Government did not know it was coming.

The Government established the Water Delivery Taskforce last spring to ensure that we have sufficient water supplies and wastewater capacity to support the Government’s ambitions and the country as a whole. Having sufficient water supply is absolutely critical for the country, and is something that we are taking very seriously. I am sure the noble Earl will be interested in looking at how the proposals in the water Bill, which is coming later this year, will also help to support the long-term security of our water industry.

At what critical point of failure are the Government willing to act in the interests of customers in the South East Water area, who have been failed time and again? Will the Government now urgently consider a different model from the previous Government—one which rejects shareholder profit being placed above investment in more resilient systems—and change to something like a mutually owned public-benefit model, or will we continue to see care homes struggling and businesses closing because they are failed by a service that is so fundamental? When exactly will we get a water Bill to fix this?

I do not think there is anybody in this House who would disagree that the water industry needs a serious shake-up. That is one reason why we brought in, as a priority, the Water (Special Measures) Bill when we came into power in the previous Session, and it is why a priority for this Session is the water Bill that will come later this year. Clearly, proper support for customers is critical. We cannot have a situation where customers cannot rely on their water service. We will be bringing in reforms in that Bill that should lead to greater control in order that we do not continually end up in the situation that we have ended up in recently.

My Lords, working as the chairman of a small water company means that one does know a bit about it. I just want to ask the Minister: when are we going to stop pouring fresh water into the sea during the winter in the east of England and then being so short of water in the east of England that the Essex & Suffolk Water company has announced that it cannot provide water for any new business or extension of an old business until 2036? The Government’s water Statement does not cover this fundamental nonsense. We should be collecting the water and having it so that people can get on with their jobs.

The noble Lord makes good points. One problem that we clearly have is that there are parts of the country that have plenty of water and parts that have very little water. Unfortunately, the parts that have very little water tend to be the ones with the highest populations. We have to look at how we are going to manage that long term, because clearly what we are doing at the moment simply is not working and is not the right approach. Again, that is why we want to reform the water industry and shake it up properly. It is critical that the points the noble Lord makes are taken into consideration, because we have to get this right.

The Minister knows that she has my full support in shaking up the water industry, as we have discussed on quite a number of occasions. While it is all very well for us to tell her to hurry up and supply more water, can she tell the House how long it takes to build a reservoir?

That is a very good question. Obviously, we have not built a new reservoir for more than 30 years. That is one reason why we have reduced domestic capacity, as the noble Lord knows. We need to just get on with this as best we can. We are trying to get a co-ordinated system-wide approach to it. Havant Thicket is the first new reservoir, so we are using that as a live learning opportunity for the Government, regulators and the water companies, because we all need to work together if we are going to do this. A reservoir senior sponsorship group was established by the Water Delivery Taskforce, designed to both identify and resolve any barriers that we have in delivering a new reservoir. There has been talk of reservoirs for years, so we need to work out why it is not happening so that we can crack on and make it happen.

The South East Water company is something of a joke. If I lived in Tunbridge Wells, I would be “Angry of Tunbridge Wells”. The failures in supply in parts of Kent over the last two or three years have been quite profound. What measures can we take to make sure that the company improves its performance? Is there a case for it being taken into some form of control by the state?

I am sure the noble Lord is aware that the chair and CEO of South East Water have resigned following calls from Defra Ministers. My colleague Minister Hardy met the company twice at the end of last month and wanted to understand better what it was doing about compensation plans, but also a proper action plan for this summer. South East Water has also been held to account through the Water Delivery Taskforce to scrutinise its infrastructure delivery. Obviously, we are also aware that Ofwat has fined it, but there is no point fining water companies if it does not fundamentally change their behaviour, so we need to go further.

Ofwat is looking at what to do about that. A licence investigation from Ofwat is going on because of South East Water’s repeated supply failures, and the Drinking Water Inspectorate is investigating the company. Ofwat has also opened enforcement action because South East Water is no longer complying with its investment-grade rating, as Moody’s obviously downgraded it. A lot is happening here but, fundamentally, we need to totally reform the water system so that this does not keep happening in the future.