Nigel Farage says the boss of South East Water must step down as 17,000 homes begin their fifth day without a supply.

David Hinton, the £400,000-a-year chief executive, has apologised saying he ‘feels customers’ pain’ but is still in post.

Tens of thousands of homes across Kent and Sussex have been without running water or with a limited supply since Saturday.

Schools and nurseries have been forced to close, medical centres and businesses have been hit, and families have been left reliant on emergency water collection points.

Towns still facing dry taps include East Grinstead, Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells, Ashford, and Sevenoaks.

Regulator Ofwat is actively investigating and considering ‘further action’ – while several MPs and councillors have said Mr Hinton, who bagged an additional £115,000 bonus last year, must go.

Mr Farage said yesterday: ‘Dave Hinton has presided over a culture of failure at South East Water for too long.

‘It’s time he took responsibility and resigned.’

He threw his support behind a letter from Kent County Council, held by his party Reform UK, that slammed the ‘systematic and repeated failures’ Mr Hinton has overseen.

Council leader Linden Kemkaran said: ‘Kent has suffered one too many water outages and I’m afraid that heads must roll,’ adding that a major incident had been declared.

She said that finding a permanent solution to the problems ‘must begin with accountability at the highest level and a significant change in approach and to the leadership’.

Six MPs from across the political spectrum co-signed a letter to Ofwat insisting South East Water (SEW) must not be allowed to ‘get away’ with its handling of the crisis.

Mr Hinton has also dodged several media interviews, with the Today programme repeatedly calling him out for ignoring their requests and MPs this month quizzing him on avoiding the media during December’s outage.

In Kent, some locals have resorted to collecting rainwater in buckets and bins in order to flush their toilets – and described the situation as ‘apocalyptic’.

Vikki Chalk told the BBC: ‘It dawned on me I could line up the few buckets I had to start gathering more for flushing! My heart goes out to large families with young kids; it must be impossible.’

Others have vowed to stop paying their water bills.

Several schools have been forced to close again, with one headteacher describing the state of affairs as ‘very Covid’.

Lynsey Sanchez Daviu is head of Kingswood Primary School, near Maidstone, which was closed again today.

She told the BBC R4 Today programme this morning: ‘We didn’t have any communication from South East Water until last night. We’re back to online learning; it’s very Covid.’

Kingswood was closed on Monday and then reopened on Tuesday, only to send all the pupils home when the water cut out again around lunchtime.

The Abergavenny Arms pub in Frant says it fears it will ‘go bust’ if the water issues continue, with a spokesperson adding: ‘It’s killing us small businesses’.

The pub said it had been without water since Sunday morning and had been forced to throw away about £500 worth of food. 

SEW has blamed the chaos on the impacts of Storm Goretti as well as a power cut at one of its pumps.

The supplier said its teams are working around the clock to carry out repairs and has apologised – while yesterday calling for £300million of additional funding.

Customers in Sussex should see water suppliers running again today, it said, but no firm deadline was given for Tunbridge Wells. 

In an ‘unprecedented move’, SEW bosses including Mr Hinton will be hauled back to Parliament to answer further questions about outages in the run-up to Christmas. 

They appeared before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee earlier this month when Mr Hinton said the water company was ‘absolutely dedicated’ to fixing the network’s resilience problems and apologised.

The Drinking Water Inspectorate has launched an investigation into the company.

An Ofwat spokesperson said on Tuesday: ‘We are concerned that residents in Kent and Sussex are without water again, and are working closely with the Drinking Water Inspectorate, which is the lead regulator for this latest supply interruption, to ensure that regulation and enforcement is aligned.

‘Ofwat already has an active investigation into South East Water related to its supply resilience, and we have met with the company to discuss these latest incidents as part of that investigation.

‘We will review all of the evidence before taking a decision on what further action may be required into whether the company has met its legal obligations set out in its licence relating to customer care, including with further potential enforcement action.’

South East Water’s Incident Manager, Matthew Dean, said today: ‘Water supplies are continuing to return to customers in Kent and Sussex following the recent cold weather and subsequent breakout of leaks and bursts which resulted in our drinking water storage tanks running very low.

‘Supplies to 8,000 customers have now been restored across the two counties, and our teams are working hard to return drinking water to the remaining 17,000.

‘Once again, we are very sorry to all our customers who have been affected. We know and understand how difficult going without water for such a long period of time is and how difficult it makes every day life. 

He said that supplies should be restored to East Grinstead, and the Linton and Kemsing areas of Kent, today.

Water has been restored to Tunbridge Wells but will be temporarily lost again today, he said, when the water level in the tanks drops too low.

A South East Water spokesperson said: ‘David Hinton, Chief Executive, remains committed to resolving the immediate issues facing customers in both Kent and Sussex, whilst continuing to seek to obtain the investment to deliver the much needed improvements in resilience to the South East Water network, detailed in the company’s Business Plan.’