Some residents remain without water after ‘major incident’ in Hastings

Early on Monday morning (April 27), Richard Parker-Harding, the head of environmental health at Rother and Wealden Councils, said the supply of water from Darwell reservoir to the Baldslow treatment plant in Hastings failed.

This meant water supplies to Battle (south), Brede, Broad Oak, Crowhurst, Guestling, Sedlescombe (South), and Westfield were affected.

The Hastings network of drinking water was also impacted.

Southern Water said customers in the TN31, TN33, TN34, TN35, TN37 and TN38 areas would lose their water supply.

The incident was declared a major incident by Rother District Council.

Repairs were completed by 2.40pm and, according to Southern Water, few customers lost water supplies.

However, some properties are still without water today.

A Southern Water spokesman said: “Fortunately due to network management few customers lost water supplies.

“We have now delivered over 4,500 bottles of water to vulnerable customers and those without water and will continue to do for as long as is required.

“Unfortunately due to a few residual airlocks in our system and some internally within properties there are a small number of properties still to be returned to service and we are continuing to work on these issues.”

Southern Water said yesterday’s burst happened in a remote location of the extremely large pipe running between the Darwell Reservoir and Beauport Water Treatment Works.

The company said the fix on this key piece of infrastructure was very difficult, adding: “Teams worked round the clock under difficult circumstances to make the fix.

“The pipe in question is seven times the size of the average street water main and delivers 20 million litres a day, serving just under 23,000 households, so we are pleased that we were able to fix the burst quickly.

“Due to the sheer size of the pipe and its crucial role, full recovery of the whole water treatment process does take some time and unfortunately this took longer than expected.

“We thank our customers for their patience and our crucial, key-worker engineers and volunteers during this difficult time.”