South East Water hits 7,000 Tunbridge Wells homes with second day of outages amid survival warning

An instrument failure at Pembury Water Treatment Works left roughly 7,000 Tunbridge Wells properties without reliable water for a second day on 19 July 2026. South East Water issued a boil notice and opened bottled water stations. The same facility caused winter outages triggering a £30.5 million Ofwat penalty on 14 July. On 17 July, the firm warned of "material uncertainty" over its survival.