Water boss should not resign as problem ‘far wider than individual people’

The chief executive officer of the water company involved in a major supply issue in Kent should not resign as issues in the industry go “far wider than individual people”, a director has said.

South East Water (SEW) has issued a “boil water notice” for 24,000 homes in and around Tunbridge Wells who have experienced a loss of water or low pressure since November 29.

On Wednesday the company said the “water quality issues” which caused the initial shutdown had returned.

They have decided to continue pumping water so that people can flush their toilets and shower, but the water cannot be drunk without being boiled first.

Liberal Democrat MP Mike Martin told the BBC earlier this week that it had been “a total failure of leadership” and called for the chief executive of SEW, Dave Hinton, to resign.

Douglas Whitfield, SEW water supply director, said resignation demands “fundamentally misunderstand the challenges that we’ve been facing in this incident as a company over the last few years, as an industry going forward, I don’t think that’s helpful”.

He told BBC Radio Kent: “I would point you to the independent Water Commission that sets out the challenges the water industry are facing and the changes it needs to make.

“They’re far wider than individual company and individual people.”

Mr Whitfield apologised to customers and said the precautionary boil notice was in place for 10 days because “public health is our key priority”.

But he said he was unable to guarantee the problem ensuring water quality would be solved within the 10 days as he was unable to provide a “definitive answer” as to why the water was not responding to normal treatment.

He said: “For the last 24 hours, the treatment process has actually been operating within all of the water quality parameters.

“Until we’re confident that we’ve resolved the issue and that it won’t reoccur, we’ll be working to keep that boil notice in place, until we are confident we can take it off.

“I can confirm all the water we supplied up to the point we put the boil notice on fully complied with all the regulations.”

Mr Whitfield apologised for “overly optimistic” messages put out to customers since the problem started but said this was “one of the most complex events that we’ve ever had”.

He added: “I can only apologise to the customers for the last week and the communications that we gave during the incident were on what we thought was going to happen at the time.

“The incident has changed from what we thought was happening at the weekend to a much longer, much more complicated issue that we’re trying to resolve.”

The Consumer Council for Water (CCW), an independent body representing water consumers across England and Wales, has called for a thorough investigation into the incident.