Properties in Broadstairs, St Peter’s and Ramsgate areas without water again

Southern Water

Properties in Broadstairs, St Peter’s and areas of Ramsgate are without water, or suffering low pressure, again today (January 30).

Reports of the supply interruption began at around 10am. It is understood water supply is expected to return shortly (as of 11.15am).

A Southern Water spokesman said: “We’re sorry some customers in the Broadstairs and Ramsgate area may have suffered low pressure or loss of water. This was due to continuing maintenance in the area. All supplies should have returned within an hour of any outage.”

This is the fifth outage in two months– 19 December, 12 January, 15 January, 21 January and today (January 30).

This was initially due to a burst water main, followed by multiple power failures at Rumfields WBS.

19 December 2022

  • This was caused by a burst water main. Supply went off in the early hours of December 19 and was restored by around 9pm on December 20.

12 and 15 January 2023

  • These outages were due to local power interruptions, which tripped the booster pumps on site.

21 January 2023

  • A mains power failure occurred and generators also failed due to a faulty starter motor.

Overnight electrical maintenance work, which included the installation of a new temporary generator and mains fail testing, was carried out at Rumsfield Water Station following the last outage (prior to today).

Southern Water said the site is now permanently manned until the new starter motor is installed, which provides resilience if there is a power issue, as the team will be able to switch power over onto the generator and keep customers in supply.

Southern Water says it is currently upgrading the Rumfields site and anticipates work to improve the water tower will be completed next month.

Southern Water accused of ‘shirking responsibilities’ over compensation payments for December outage

20 Comments

  1. Southern Water are simply not fit for purpose. If they aren’t cutting water off for residents, they are dumping sewage all along our coast.

    If this was any other company without the benefit of a monopoly in the market they would have gone out of business long ago.

    • Given that water is vital for life, one would have thought that there would be back-up pumps etc, so that whilst one is running, the other is being maintained.
      I imagine the fire service has such systems in place.

  2. According to the article this disruption is the result of “continuing maintenance”, quite what are they meant to do, people complain when there’s an outage that they feel is due to lack of maintenance and again when its the result of maintenance.
    I’m sure there are many that repair their car only when it breaks down and others who put up with the inconvenience of being without their vehicle whilst its being serviced.

  3. What a shambles. It’s about time they started spending the money on the infrastructure instead of shareholders / executives bonuses and come into the modern day. I thought you were given bonuses for good service and not for failure after failure. Large organisations seem to think that saying “Sorry” is ok and gets them off the hook.

  4. Have arranged a TDC Scrutiny meeting on the 16th February to begin discussions on these water outages and low water pressure.

  5. What do you do about no2’s if you can’t flush. Presumably the veggie patch will earn some much needed steroid-like growth?

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