Southern Water: Hastings homes without water for sixth day

Hundreds of properties in East Sussex are without water or with a limited supply for a sixth day.

Southern Water said 32,500 customers in Hastings and St-Leonards-on-Sea were initially left without water after a pipe burst on Thursday.

The owner of a music venue in Hastings questioned whether the water firm was investing enough to solve the issues.

Southern Water has apologized for the disruption, stating that all affected schools were now able to re-open.

At 20:00 BST on Monday, Southern Water said supplies had been restored to about 26,000 properties, with “a significant number” of the remaining affected customers expected to be back in supply “soon”.

Newgate reservoir has re-opened and pressure is building back to normal after its temporary closure had led to interruptions, the firm said.

However, up to 2,000 properties in parts of St Helen’s and St Helen’s Wood are unlikely to see supplies return until Tuesday, when the Fairlight Reservoir has been restored, it says.

A fleet of 24 tankers is also being used to support areas still without supply.

Three bottled water stations – at Asda, Tesco and Sea Road – were due to re-open at 08:00 on Tuesday.

Southern Water said it had distributed more than a million liters of water to customers over the past four days – making it the biggest bottled water operations ever handled by the company.

Paul Mandry, the owner of the music venue The Crypt, said he had been forced to close, and called on Southern Water to invest more into solving the problems.

“I don’t really think they care about the small businesses in Hastings and the affect the floods and now the burst water main is going to have on the town,” he told BBC Radio Sussex.

Over the weekend, East Sussex councilor Godfrey Daniel said: “The impact on the town will be drastic, a lot of people will lose a lot of money.

“These businesses are struggling as it is with the cost-of-living crisis.”

Southern Water apologized for the disruption the outage had caused, “especially over the bank holiday weekend.”