Supply issues across the South East

In December 2022, we battled tirelessly to resolve issues caused by snow and ice thawing rapidly, following the big freeze.

This severe weather resulted in a 300 per cent increase in the number of bursts, compared to normal, both on our supply pipes and on our customers’ pipes across Kent and Sussex, with around 15,000 homes and businesses without water or with low pressure.

On a normal winter’s day, we extract, treat and pump an average of 520 million litres of drinking water a day to our customers. During a 24-hour period, this increased by more than 100 million litres to over 620 million – that’s the equivalent of adding almost three towns the size of Maidstone or Eastbourne to our network overnight!

During this period, we put all available resources to finding and fixing leaks on our 9,000 miles of pipe (that could stretch to Australia!), as well as distributing bottled water. This was an incredibly fast moving and challenging situation, and one we were very sorry to our customers without water for.

Although we planned for this event, it isn’t possible to predict when and where pipes will burst, which is why, as well as our teams working flat out to find, fix and repair leaks on our pipes, we asked our customers to help by checking their homes, businesses, empty properties, outside taps and troughs in fields for leaks. This enabled us to get those leaks repaired as soon as possible, reducing the impact to our customers and minimising any damage to properties, which can be costly to repair.

We asked our customers who did have water to reduce their usage and only use it for the essentials, take shorter showers and only run washing machines and dishwashers when they had a full load, whilst asking them to avoid using appliances at the peak times of 7am to 9am and 4pm to 7pm.

In the worst affected areas, bottled water stations were set up, and we delivered water direct to our most vulnerable customers who are on our Priority Services Register.