Water is at the heart of our daily lives, from that first cup of tea in the morning to a relaxing shower at night. When the sun comes out and we all reach for the tap at once, or paddling pools, thirsty gardens, and extra loads of washing, it puts a real strain on our water supply.
We need you to make a few small, simple changes at home to save water. This will help ensure there’s plenty of water for everyone in our community, and will help protect our environment, too.
Simple swaps for big savings
Here are a few easy ways to save water at home, helping both your wallet and the planet:
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Updates about your water supply
The amount of water people use each day changes depending on the weather. We normally supply around 544 million litres of water a day. In the summer months, this can go up to over 600 million litres a day.
Why your help matters
Your efforts to save water at home are already making a real impact, and we're so grateful. Thank you!
However, we're heading into a particularly challenging summer. We've just had the driest spring in decades, and demand for water has been higher than ever before; reaching 640 million litres of water in one day alone! Because of this, all regions across our supply area are now in amber alert. We need your help to reduce non-essential water use to ensure the taps keep flowing for everyone.
We’re doing everything we can to treat and supply water as quickly as possible. But treated water is fresh, so we can only store it for a limited time. There’s also a limit to how much water we can treat each day. Our sites work 24/7, but if people use more water than we can produce, some customers may temporarily lose supply in some areas.
Our teams are working round the clock to find and fix leaks too, and make ongoing repairs and upgrades to our 9,000 miles of pipes.
Every drop we all save makes a difference.
What we're doing to improve our network
We’re always making improvements to our network to make sure we can supply water to everyone. To prepare for summer, we have:
- Increased the amount of water we can treat at several sites across Kent and Sussex.
- Changed when we do maintenance on our water treatment works and treated water storage tanks to make sure we have as much water available as possible.
- Increased the amount of untreated (raw) water we can take from locations in Kent.
- Launched a comprehensive leakage recovery strategy, investing in new detection technologies, expanding our specialist teams, and increasing investment across our network.
- Appointed a dedicated Alternative Water Manager and bought 10 additional water tankers. So far, 5 have been delivered with the rest set to come later in 2025. These tankers help us move water around the network and boost supplies if needed.
- Identified ‘at risk’ areas for closer monitoring and developed plans to put in place if there are any water shortages.
There’s still more to do. The south east of England is one of the most water-stressed areas in the country. We need new treatment plants, storage reservoirs and pipes to make sure we always have enough water in the future. It takes time to plan and build these.
Projects we're working on to improve our water supply:
- We’re installing about 17 kilometres of new pipes between our water treatment works at Bewl and our drinking water storage tanks at Wadhurst and Rotherfield. This will improve the water supply in the Wadhurst and Best Beech areas. This work started in April 2024 and is due to finish in 2025. We’re also upgrading our Bewl Water Treatment Works to increase the amount of water we can treat and supply to the area. You can find out more here.
- We’re installing 16 kilometres of new water pipes in two areas of Kent. One is from our Wichling Water Treatment Works through Doddington, and the other connects two drinking water storage tanks on either side of Charing. Work began in April 2023, and the first phase (Wichling/Doddington) is almost complete. You can find out more here.
- We’re building a new, state-of-the-art water treatment works at Aylesford near Maidstone. The site will have new features, such as two water storage tanks, so we can keep supplying water while we carry out essential maintenance. You can watch the progress of the site build and find out more here.
We also have lots of plans to improve our network in the future. These are set out in our business plan, which we’ve sent to our regulator, Ofwat. You can read the plan here.
Reservoirs
During the summer, we use water from our reservoirs to supply the extra water everyone needs.
Our biggest reservoirs in Sussex, Ardingly and Arlington, store up to 8,300 million litres of water and supply 8% of all the water we provide.
We also get water from boreholes and chalk aquifers.
Our reservoirs refill between October and April when there’s more rain. You can find out more about our reservoirs here.
Treatment and beyond
Once we collect water from the source, we treat it to make sure it’s safe to drink.We take great care over the quality of our water and constantly monitor our treatment process.
Once the water is treated, we send it to drinking water storage tanks around our region. These tanks connect to the pipes that deliver water to your tap.
This process can take several hours, and high water usage makes it harder for us to supply water to everyone. You can find out more about our processes here.
