South East Water: Businesses seek compensation over outages

Businesses left without water over Christmas are seeking compensation from their supplier.

Thousands of properties were cut off in west Kent and East Sussex, with South East Water blaming burst pipes caused by a sudden thaw.

A dairy farmer who had to buy thousands of litres of water from a neighbouring farm described the situation as "ridiculous".

South East Water said it was in touch with customers about compensation.

Steve Reynolds, owner of Kingcott Dairy in Staplehurst, Kent, said: "We need to sit down with South East Water and talk about what's just happened, why it's happened and what's going to happen in the future.

"We can't have this going on again for a whole week. We can accept a day or two, but a whole week without water is ridiculous."

Mr Reynolds said the dairy had to shut down cheese production while he used a 6,000 litre milk tanker to ferry water to his farm to keep his herd alive.

"Once the cows haven't got water, you haven't got time," he said, "they're very susceptible to water issues, they'll lose their milk very quickly and they're going to die if they don't have water."

Adam Cassettari, manager of the Kings Head pub in Staplehurst, said he lost "thousands and thousands of pounds".

"We had Christmas parties all through the week, we had to lose all of those and give their deposits back," he said.

"Myself and my chef live here, so we were sitting upstairs on Christmas Day in the cold, no water, no heating, and it just had a big impact, mentally, physically and on the business."

Douglas Whitfield, South East Water's operations director, said: "Businesses owners who had to close should claim on their own business insurance. Our insurers will then work with their insurance companies to settle any costs.

"Our household customers do not need to do anything, as soon as our analysis of what happened is complete we will then assess what compensation levels may be applicable.

"We would expect to apply the compensation due to household customer accounts by the end of January."

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