Image description: A housebuilder working on the frame of a house-building project. Photo by Josh Olalde on Unsplash
House-building plans in Kent are in jeopardy after South East Water has warned that it has the capacity to supply water to only one third of all the new homes being planned.
The blueprint for 23,000 new properties across Canterbury, Whitstable and Herne Bay is reaching its final stages and councillors have voted to place additional scrutiny on South East Water (SEW).
At a council meeting earlier in March, SEW’s director of operations Douglas Whitfield said “from our review of the latest housing forecast figures, we have identified that we cannot accommodate additional growth beyond what was assumed in our Water Resources Management Plan 2024 in areas where we do not have a supply-demand surplus.
The water authority’s management plan had been calculated to supply 6,318 additional homes in Tonbridge and Malling over the plan period until 2042. The council’s current target of 19,746 is 210% greater than that.
Councillors at Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council (TMBC) said the warning must serve as a wake-up call on the Labour government’s plans to build 1.5m new homes by the end of this parliament in 2029.
South East Water ‘accelerating’ works upgrade
The water firm has come under pressure in recent months, with confirmation last week that it faces a £22.46m fine for water outages across the county between 2020 and 2023. Just before Christmas the Tunbridge Wells area experienced significant supply disruptions to 24,000 properties.
According to the water firm, an independent review of this latest November and December supply loss would be shared with the government in April.
South East Water (SEW) said engineering works and operational changes were now under way after tens of thousands of its customers lost water, many for multiple days, in January.
SEW announced that battery installations to mitigate power issues and fitting of more temporary storage tanks began in February. Treatment facilities upgrades have also been brought forward, according to the firm.
Mike Martin, the MP for Tunbridge Wells, said SEW had listened to “repeated calls to bring forward urgent and targeted investment” but it was “hard to pass a substantiated judgement” without further details.
According to SEW chief executive David Hinton, the firm will deliver the changes in the next six months in parallel to a separate five-year investment plan.