The English town with no running water

For more than a week, the people of Royal Tunbridge Wells were left without consistent running water. We travelled to the town to see what happens when a basic human need disappears overnight.

Residents tell us they haven’t been able to shower, run businesses, or even flush toilets properly. Instead, they’re driving to emergency water stations to collect bottled drinking water and “grey water” to get by. Vulnerable residents say promised water deliveries never arrived.

This is the second major outage in just a few months. Back in November and December, Tunbridge Wells also lost water an extended period. Now it's happening again, and patience has run out.

Anger is being directed at South East Water and its CEO David Hinton, who recently scored himself eight out of ten for his performance in front of Parliament. He admitted to earning a £400,000 salary, not including bonuses. Locals tell us they feel abandoned by a privatised monopoly that faces no real competition and, they argue, no real accountability.

With talk of government removing South East Water’s licence and growing calls for nationalisation, we ask: how did a modern British town end up without water, and who is actually responsible?

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