I’ve lived in Tunbridge Wells for 20 years, and have never met anyone disgusted. Until this week. Yup, we’re all disgusted now. As you would be if you couldn’t flush your loo for days on end, nor take a shower, nor wash your hands, nor drink a glass of water without schlepping to a communal bottle station and waiting in a long queue. The Royal bit in our town’s name has never felt more inappropriate.
The Royal bit in our town’s name has never felt more inappropriate
What on earth happened? Well, it all started on Saturday, when thousands of us noticed the water pressure in our taps was weak to wretched. Come Sunday morning, it stopped altogether. It quickly became apparent that South East Water, a company with form in this sort of thing in our town, had managed to botch the treatment works, with the result that pretty much our entire supply had to be shut down for fear of poisoning us. A ‘bad batch of coagulant chemicals’ is to blame, we’re told, though nobody here understands what on earth that means. We just want our water back.
Never mind, said South East, it’ll all be okay by Sunday evening. Just hang in there. Only it wasn’t. Still no water. Oh, sorry, said South East, we now mean Monday morning. Please be patient. Only it wasn’t by Monday morning either. Nor Tuesday morning. Nor Wednesday morning.
By then, pretty much every pub, café and restaurant in the town had closed, old people’s homes were in crisis, schools had shut like it was Covid all over again, nurseries and doctor’s surgeries were dashing around to get whatever water they could from wherever – some had to close anyway – and people were driving miles to find an establishment that might let them use a toilet. How businesses will be compensated for lost revenue, at the very busiest time of the year, I have no idea.
Throughout all of this, South East’s communications have been appalling. CEO David Hinton has been nowhere to be seen. Instead, the ‘head of water quality’ (don’t laugh) has been shoved in front of the cameras to give interviews for which he’s hopelessly ill-prepared. I felt sorry for him, and was genuinely worried at one stage that he was about to either have a panic attack or burst into tears. It was awful, car-crash telly.
Meanwhile, we’ve had a series of twice-daily statements on the company’s website, which began on Sunday with the words ‘Good news’ but then rapidly descended into: ‘We are extremely sorry …’ and a message along the lines of ‘if your water looks brown in colour, please don’t worry.’ Frankly, we’ve stopped believing anything that South East tells us, not least because these statements are badly written, woefully impersonal and contain conflicting advice.
Credit, however, to our Lib Dem MP Mike Martin, who has played a blinder. He might even get old Tories like me voting for him next time. Martin has been our main source of information, seems to be at the bottling station more often than most of us put together, and is so appalled by the failings of South East that he’s demanded a COBRA response from the government and even the army.
An over-reaction? You might not think so if you lived here. Martin also arranged for Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey to visit the town on Tuesday. I never thought I’d write this, but I was delighted to see him. Davey followed up his visit with a timely question about our dire situation to Keir Starmer at PMQs yesterday. If only the Prime Minister sounded like he’d put nice words into strong action.
The good news is that community spirit has kicked in, with friends helping elderly neighbours, and those in the west of the town, who have come through it all relatively unscathed, offering bathroom facilities to friends a few streets away in the east. Not having clean water doesn’t half put things in perspective. When you lose something as crucial to life as water, everything else, from taxes to trans rights and Trump, appear monumentally insignificant.
As I write, the water is now flowing at last for most of us, but is, we’re told, only suitable to drink after it’s been boiled. We’ll have to boil the water for at least ten days, yet few of us trust that timeline. Throughout this whole messy business, South East has made promises that it’s broken just a few hours later. In future years, it’ll be a case study in how not to handle a crisis.
As for the invisible Mr Hinton and his hefty six-figure salary, his days must surely be numbered. With huge rewards come big responsibilities, and he’s gone missing in action when he was most needed. I fear for him. For hell hath no fury like a disgusted resident of Tunbridge Wells.
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