Photo caption: Speaking to BBC South East Today about the unacceptable length of time that some local residents have been left without running water
In July hundreds of local households, businesses and farmers in East Kent had no water supply for several days. Dargate, Dunkirk and the area around Boughton-Under-Blean were affected in my constituency, plus thousands of properties in and around Whitstable.
As well as improving the resilience of their water supply system, I want SE Water to make sure they are much better prepared in the event this happens again.
SE Water has admitted the response should have been better and they are still looking into exactly what went wrong. They have also told me that they don’t know which properties have livestock and had no answers for why their emergency water supply system failed.
There is a livestock registration form on SE Water’s website which owners can complete and be given a tank to store water. Many people are not using these tanks, so SE Water are looking at other ways to manage water supplies to livestock owners. If you are a livestock owner totally dependent on the water mains you can complete this form so SE Water can make contingency plans with you in the event of water shortages:
https://www.southeastwater.co.uk/help/works-and-outages/register-for-livestock-alternate-water/
Together with Rosie Duffield MP I am organising a public meeting with SE Water in the Autumn. That will be a chance to get them to explain the steps they are taking to stop this happening again and to be better prepared in the event of water supply failure. If you were affected or are worried about this for the future, please let me know and I will make sure you receive an invitation to the meeting.
