There has been quite a lot of adverse publicity recently over water failures in Tunbridge Wells and East Grinstead recently. These are supplied by South East Water (SEW). There has been considerable criticism of SEW in the media by various regulators, pointing out that they had been repeatedly warned that their actions in terms of maintaining and planning ahead were inadequate and that this was 'a disaster waiting to happen' and that when the first outage occurred the regulator was not satisfied that it could not happen again. It duly did.
You don't have a contract with the supplier; the country is carved up into areas and you have no say in who supplies you and apart from general service standards they seemingly have no obligation to you - except to provide potable water sufficient to drink. It’s all covered by the Water Act 2014.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/21/contents Remarkably, you then have a private company, with shareholders, providing a regulated service which you have to accept whatever.
Less well known widely is that the same company imposed a TUB, temporary use ban, in July 2025 in certain areas. This is familiarly known as a hosepipe ban, and that effectively covers what you can't do - anything that needs a hosepipe in a domestic setting, effectively. This hosepipe ban was doubled down in October 2025 and remarkably is still in place at the end of January 206. Although Southern Water had a similar ban this was lifted a month ago.
Winter rainfall has been above average to exceptional – January will probably be in the top 10 for rain since records began in the South.
I have been affected by this; because of where I live I pay my supply bills to SEW and hence have been unable to use a hosepipe for 6 months. I cannot wash cars or other vehicles properly; one of my small pleasures in life is having clean vehicles, and I own a pressure washer, various different cleaning agents (the most effective of which requires two treatments of ‘foam’ sprayed on with said pressure washer) to that end. Furthermore, we live on the coast, and regularly get everything sprayed with salt whenever the weather is bad, and you will recall we have suffered Storms Eunice and Goretti recently. The salt is highly corrosive to ironwork and cars should be rinsed off regularly in such conditions. I have been unable to do any of this and the vehicles’ condition is starting to suffer. I also have a drive and a patio, and the pressure washer has an attachment that allows me to clean and weed these effectively. I have been unable to do this, and we are starting to see damage to cement around the patio from moss growth and growth between blocks on the drive. We have a greenhouse, and that should have been cleaned at the end of the growing season, again with the pressure washer to ensure that the windows are clean, overwintering snails are flushed out etc.
Had my hobby have been golf, my pleasures would be unaffected as golf courses, being commercial enterprises have been able to use as much as they want.
I have tried to ameliorate this; I paid £200 for a battery powered washer and have 3 barrels, each of 200L, I collect my own rainwater in, and that has helped to an extent, but these are at my cost and the washer isn’t nearly powerful enough.
I am therefore considering whether I can sue SEW for loss of amenity, damage to my vehicles through unmitigated salt and damage and need for reparation on my drive, patio and greenhouse. The head of claim is clearly their negligence. While there is no definition of ’temporary’ legally, there comes a point when maintaining a ban on something temporarily for half the year when there should be no need is clearly not the actions of a competent supplier and can readily be argued as unreasonable, especially as no other water provider has done so. Any thoughts?
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