South East Water UK Avis 

We had a water leak on our property, which was not lack of maintenance or investment. It was just a 50 year old plastic pipe. South East Water informed us of the potential leak, investigated very quickly, and arranged for it to be fixed. They then wrote off a very large amount of the bill, using their leak allowance. Their staff were all very efficient, knowledgeable, and understanding. I couldn't fault them over this leak.

Over the past two months our household experienced two major water supply failures in Tunbridge Wells first in late November/December 2025 (including a prolonged boil water notice), and again in January 2026. During the January incident we had repeated loss of supply and extremely low pressure over multiple days. Toilets would not flush and taps were only dripping. Despite being registered on the Priority Services Register, bottled water deliveries were either delayed or not received at all. While the company issued general updates, communication about timelines frequently changed and we were told supply would return sooner than it actually did. Compensation has also been a point of dispute, as the company appears to compensate only for complete “no water” events, excluding prolonged periods of unusable low pressure. This has been particularly stressful for our household due to pregnancy and recent minor surgery at the time of the outages. What needs improvement:
Clearer, property-level communication rather than generic area-wide updates.
More reliable Priority Services deliveries.
Transparent compensation calculations.
Better resilience planning following the December incident to avoid a second failure in January Water is an essential service, and repeated outages in such a short period significantly impact daily life.

Zero action despite repeatedly reporting a leak outside our neighbours house. This leak has been going on since mid January. I have reported the incident on line twice now - they do respond with the 'Thank you for reporting blah, blah, blah', but that's it ......NO ACTION. I've also called but ended up hanging up after 40 minutes. My husband did get to speak to someone several weeks ago, but again the 'blah, blah, blah' NO ACTION. I'm fed up with neighbours knocking on my door asking if the leak had been reported as it's affecting the whole road. For goodness sake do something about these leaks, appauling service. NEWS FLASH !!!!! Well someone turned up, parked in my parking space without asking, sat in the van for around 30 mins and drove off - I suppose that counts as a call ?

30 + mins just to talk with human. Seriously.

if you setup for callback you will never get call back on same day!!! Terrific service :)

It’s not just south east water that’s useless. The subcontractors are just as bad. Poor communication, no work ethic, unreasonable attitude. Not fit for purpose. It’s rotten all the way from top to bottom. New senior management desperately needed. I’ve had six or seven different crews out to fix a leak. Appalling.

The excuse today is power outage . Nobody who works at this water "company" care because it doesn't affect their lives all their interested in is making money and making sure they get thousands of pounds in bonuses if not millions. Absolutely disgusting. The CEO should be forced to resign. I hope they get millions of pounds worth of fines

The service provided is not fit for purpose. A blanket hosepipe ban STILL remains in place, their customers water supplies have been repeatedly interrupted. These problems are the direct result of years of inadequate investment and poor maintenance of infrastructure. Customers are being asked to accept restrictions and disruptions that should have been prevented through proper long-term planning and upkeep and yet we all have to endure annual price increases.

Hosepipe ban since July 2025 last year & still in force as of 13.01 .2026. This company has no resiliency whatsoever as they have sold off their estates for house building etc. Their website need a lot to be desired as it’s deliberately confusing. The current CEO is unfit for his high office & salary always hiding behind lesser minions. The company would be a good candidate for full re- nationalisation, it couldn’t be any worse.

£912 a year for water is a disgrace when HDF (UK) Holdings Ltd non UK benefits from increasing charges and when these 2 get massive pay rises!  Chief Executive: increased by 30.2%
to £400,000.
 Chief Financial Officer: increased by 19.2%
to £300,000.

ZERO stars. Day 4 no water - 2.3 million in dividends in 2023 despite making a huge loss - why was this money not spent on ensuring they can provide the service for which we are all paying. HORRIFIC/ IMMORAL/ quite franky a nightmare of a joke.

I have just come out of hospital after surgery and cannot shower ,bath or flush the toilet, 3 days now without water and only feeble ambiguous excuses from SEW. Tunbridge Wells and now East Grinstead, why do planner still agree to further housing development in this region when it is obvious SEW cannot even reliably supply the existing housing stock?

After being told that water in East Grinstead would be back on at the end of the weekend . We have now been informed that SEW has no idea when we will have water. Utter shambles.

This company should not be allowed to continue operating in the manor it is.
Its entire service is shocking.
Along with 1000s of other people our village Frinsted has been without water for 36 hours with no information other than their ridiculous web site. Apparently we are expected to drive to headcorn for water. We have 80 and 90 year olds in the village and no one has been offered help. At very least all board officers should be sacked. This is a catastrophic failure, they are blaming the last storm, we have had far worse in the surrounding areas and not lost supply.

Would give no stars if possible - although the problems in Tunbridge Wells have been well documented the reality is worse. This is our 3rd, and 2nd multi-day, period without water since early November. The latest (failed) plan was that we would get water in the morning and it would go off in the afternoon and evening- isn’t working - yesterday on at 0730 for 4 hours - today not until 0900- and the messages about water returning are now in the conditional tense. Not only unable to deliver what they promise but delusional too - a very long way from being the water company that customers want to have. It and its management remain unaccountable too.

The most useless and ineffective water supplier.
No water in East Grinstead. But they set up the bottled supplies in Sainsbury's car park. The town is gridlocked. It took me more than 2 hours to get any water !!
Why would you site the collection point in such an inaccessible location, especially when the station is routing passengers from London to Brighton through the town and using buses.
It seems there is no logical thought processes in this company.
The man at the top should go. He's not worth a penny! But the rest of the management aren't any better !!!
So here we are, day 2 of no water. SEW say they will give us an update as to when we will have our water restored. That was 3pm. It's now 5pm. No sign of an update...
What I would still like to know is why there is NO resilience?
We were finally told at 10.59 pm that they don't know when the supply will be restored.
It seems it is everyone else to blame, for working from home.
I think it's all the money siphoned off in the form of "bonuses", rather than reinvested to provide an infrastructure with resilience.
Absolutely abysmal performance.
David Hinton needs resign, immediately and without delay.
So the latest update from SEW at 8.50 am suggests that more supplies will be restored throughout the night... which night is this? It's morning now on day 5. Seems like a repeat without any thought processes.
More lies !
They worry about THEIR reputation. Try worrying about your CUSTOMERS!! Your reputation, it's extremely low and in tatters.
More likely they are worrying about the consequences... The senior management team, and directors, should be sacked and a criminal investigation instigated.
South East Water have just said on the local BBC News that East Grinstead has had its water supply restored. If so, where's mine? We have nothing coming from our taps !!
Outright liars !!
We finally got water supply back on Thursday.
Guess what? It's Monday and we have no water. The Aqualerter has no information !
SEW, you are just totally incompetent !!
I hope your licence is stripped !

Stuck at home in the middle of nowhere on my own with 2 small children. Water has been off all day and a check on the website indicates that this could be due to any number of local faults with their crumbling infrastructure. It also gives no indication whatsoever as to where they are distributing bottled water, or if they are at all. I have tried calling twice to find out which fault is causing our lack of service and where they are distributing bottled water from, yet I have been on hold for 30 minutes on both occasions trying to get this information which their appalling website is unable to provide. It's also January and we still have a hosepipe ban in place as they haven't built a single new reservoir since they were flogged off to a mixture of private equity and foreign pension funds 30 years ago. It really is about time this shower has every single penny of taxpayer bailout funding removed and they were fined to the hilt for every single failing. The foreign pension funds that own it have had billions out of us, let it fail and stuff them so they can get back to spending our bills on stuff that matters.

Edit: just got a text that bottled water is being distributed from Headcorn Aerodrome. A 15 mile drive away on tiny C and B roads. Over 12 hours since after our water supply was ceased.

One star is far more than they deserve. Water pouring down roads for months and told it’s not a priority. A hose pipe ban. A 50% increase in our bills. A CEO on £500000 who should hang his head in shame at the shambles that the company is. This company needs an intervention now. This can not be allowed to go on.

Terrible service price increased for our house £400 per year more than 40% in one year.
I have exact used of water usage and bill for 6 months increased by over £200. Same amount water usage 97m3 in both six month period and shocking increase in price. My gas and electricity price per month is £100/m less than water bill price per month

Do you actually look at your reviews or do you look at your bank balances? Genuine question

We were left without water for 10 days, and the company has still failed to pay the compensation owed, either by bank transfer or cheque. I requested a bank refund over two weeks ago and was later told a cheque would be sent, yet the company has continued to delay payment with repeated excuses. Customer service has been disorganised and ineffective throughout. Extremely disappointing service.