Water bosses have apologised as a latest outage has seen almost 1,400 homes in Kent facing supply issues for the second day in a row.
South East Water (SEW) chiefs have confirmed residents in Benenden, Cranbrook, and Rolvenden continue to be either without water or facing low pressure.
Almost 1,400 homes across Benenden, Cranbrook, and Rolvenden are facing water supply issues. Picture: South East Water
The company said the interruptions started shortly before 6am on Friday and are still ongoing this afternoon.
It insists work to repair the latest burst water main in Swattenden Lane, Cranbrook, is ongoing as it looks to recharge its network to restore supplies to affected areas.
A statement shortly before 2.30pm said: “We fully acknowledge that this level of service is not acceptable, and our teams remain dedicated to rectifying the situation as a matter of urgency.
“The ongoing hot weather means demand for drinking water remains high and the levels in our drinking water storage tanks in the area are very low.
“However, the multiple bursts in this part of the network and low storage levels of drinking water have caused airlocks within our system, which will take time to remove.
“We fully acknowledge that this level of service is not acceptable…”
“We are delivering bottled water to all customers in the Benenden, Cranbrook and Rolvenden areas today.”
Bosses say a water collection point at The Weald Sports Centre in Cranbrook will stay open until 10pm today.
They say they successfully repaired the burst main in Swattenden Lane yesterday.
However, a further burst on the same water main overnight is now causing the issues, which SEW says it is fixing as “a matter of urgency”.
A statement released this morning added: “We’re delivering bottled water to customers on our priority services register in the affected areas and we’re also using tankers in the area to support our network locally.
South East Water has set up a water station at The Weald Sports Centre in Cranbrook. Stock picture
“We’re very sorry that customers in the Benenden, Cranbrook and Rolvenden areas continue to experience water supply issues.”
Today’s issues comes just one week after residents in Bredgar, Borden and Doddington areas were left without water last Saturday (August 8).
Those in Teynham, Lenham, Charing and Egerton also faced issues throughout that weekend.
Last month, new SEW boss, John Halsall, promised a £1.9 billion infrastructure boost to “really focus” on fixing leaks and other problems.
He replaced the under-fire David Hinton following months of pressure from MPs and residents after thousands of homes and businesses were left without supplies.
Mr Halsall has announced SEW will be ploughing resources into long-term “sustainable improvements” and taking “small actions” to improve the service during the next nine months.
The huge cash injection will go towards more storage tanks and reservoirs as well as improving water treatment works.
It would also be spent on changing the way water is moved around pipes in the south east.