Regulator Ofwat has launched an investigation into South East Water after repeated outages left thousands of households across Kent and Sussex without drinking water.

Ofwat said today it had launched a probe into whether the supplier had breached its licence condition by failing to comply with customer service standards obligations and offered appropriate support to affected customers during supply interruptions.

If the regulator decides South East Water has breached the conditions and should be stripped of the licence, the supplier could fall into a special administration regime until a new buyer was found.

If Ofwat rules that the supplier is in breach, but does not revoke the licence, penalties can include a fine of 10 per cent of the firm’s annual turnover.

The latest incident has seen thousands of properties in Kent and Sussex left without drinking water for the sixth day running, with South East Water blaming the outage on Storm Goretti causing burst pipes and power cuts.

As of this morning, water had been restored to 16,500 properties in East Grinstead, but 7,500 customers in Kent remain without water, South East Water said.

Around 6,500 of those still affected are in Tunbridge Wells on a ‘booster system’, which the company said it now has a ‘new recovery plan’ for.

Tunbridge Wells also suffered a sustained outage in November and December, with around 24,000 properties in and around the Kent town left without drinkable water for almost two weeks.

Ofwat has already launched an investigation into South East Water’s supply resilience, looking at whether it has failed to develop and maintain an efficient water supply systems, which is ongoing.

Lynn Parker, Ofwat senior director for enforcement, said: ‘The last six weeks have been miserable for businesses and households across Kent and Sussex with repeated supply problems.

‘We know that this has had a huge impact on all parts of daily life and hurt businesses, particularly in the run-up to the festive period.

‘That is why we need to investigate and to determine whether the company has breached its licence condition.’

It is the first investigation launched by Ofwat into a potential breach of the customer-focused licence condition.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said yesterday that ministers were holding emergency daily meetings over the ongoing South East Water outage.

A number of schools in Kent and Sussex have also been forced to close due to the outage.

The water company has said it is supporting schools, care homes, medical providers, and those with livestock with bottled water deliveries, along with supporting hospitals with tankers of water.

South East Water’s incident manager Matthew Dean said today: ‘In total, around 7,500 properties across Kent are currently without water, and we are very sorry to all our customers who have been and continue to be affected.

‘We know and understand how difficult going without water for such a long period of time is and how difficult it makes everyday life.

‘We are continuing to use 26 tankers to pump water directly into our network to increase the amount of water available in the affected areas and our leak repair teams are working around the clock to fix the leaks and bursts across Kent and Sussex, with extra resources available to help carry out repairs.’

In a similar incident last month, 24,000 properties in and around Tunbridge Wells were left without drinkable water for almost two weeks.

South East Water chief executive David Hinton was grilled by MPs for his company’s handling of that crisis last week.

On Tuesday, Alistair Carmichael, chairman of the Parliamentary Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, said he and his colleagues remained ‘deeply sceptical’ about South East Water’s version of events presented to MPs last week.

He indicated that they plan to recall Mr Hinton and the chairman of South East Water, Chris Train, to provide further evidence to the committee.

Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells Mike Martin has been calling for Mr Hinton to resign for more than a month.

Other politicians have voiced their dissatisfaction as well, and Kent County Council leader Linden Kemkaran said on Tuesday that ‘heads must roll’ as a result of the ongoing outages.

The majority of those still affected were in East Grinstead, where approximately 11,500 properties remained without water yesterday. 

Temperatures in East Grinstead have already fallen to -1C (30F) this week, and the area is under a Met Office weather warning for heavy rain today.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey called for South East Water to be stripped of its licence for failing ‘over and over again’, during an exchange at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday.

He said: ‘Families, pensioners, schools, care homes and businesses without any water since Saturday, and the water company bosses involved now stand accused of misleading Parliament over their failures.

‘South East Water keeps failing its customers over and over again. So will the Government immediately strip them of their licence?’

Sir Keir replied that the situation is ‘totally unacceptable’.

The Prime Minister said: ‘He will want to know that ministers have chaired daily emergency meetings to hold the company to account to deliver on the change that’s urgently needed at the moment in all the areas that he mentioned.

‘We’ve also doubled the compensation rates for individuals and businesses and we’re absolutely clear the company must urgently invest in infrastructure and we’ll publish the water White Paper in due course.’

Bottled water stations were in place in Tunbridge Wells, East Grinstead and Maidstone.