South East Water is improving the resilience of its water supply network which serves 2.3 million customers across Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire.
The upgrades will deliver additional capacity and water quality protection, improving the water supply to over 24,000 households across Tunbridge Wells and surrounding areas and strengthen South East Water’s wider network resilience.
Since February 2026, this six-month programme has focused on engineering works and accelerating operational changes to the way supply interruptions are managed.
Critical progress includes:
Pembury Water Treatment Works: Two new filters were installed to improve treatment processes, reduce the risk of water quality issues and increase the capacity of water that can be provided into the Tunbridge Wells system.
These filters will allow South East Water to support the Pembury network from the Bewl Water Treatment Works, providing an additional source of water to the Tunbridge Wells system, if needed.
Additional operational improvements include revised site maintenance schedules, updated testing guidance for operators, and a revised inventory of critical spare equipment.
Tonbridge Water Treatment Works: Three carbon filters were installed and are operational.
Bringing Tonbridge back into supply adds 1.5 million litres per day of water to South East Water’s network. These filters will bolster the site’s filtration capacity and prevent contamination from nearby housing construction sites.
Bewl to Cottage Hill Transfer Main: Engineering work to the 12-kilometre pipeline is complete, with final tests now being scheduled. When operational Bewl will distribute to the Wadhurst area of Sussex for the first time.
This will provide much needed additional resilience in this area of the network that suffered from supply interruptions in the summer of 2023.
Increasing spare stock levels: A programme to increase and optimise the location of spare equipment is complete. This will reduce supply interruption risks and enable quicker repairs.
These works and updates are amongst many of the actions implemented by South East Water to tackle recent water supply interruptions and customer and community feedback.
A spokesman says that although progress to date is a “significant step forward”, there is more work to do and South East Water is committed to providing regular updates on progress.
David Hinton, CEO, South East Water, said: “Following the unacceptable incidents our customers recently experienced, we have dedicated considerable time and resource in the last three months implementing our resilience plan.
“The engineering works completed to date include critical upgrades to our infrastructure in Pembury and Tonbridge Whilst these changes are happening behind the scenes, we are delivering these investments to mitigate the risk of future supply interruption for tens of thousands of our customers.”
