Water Watch Launched to Help Residents Report Leaks and Flooding

Local MP Tom Tugendhat has launched a new Water Watch initiative, giving residents across Tonbridge, Edenbridge and the North Downs villages a simple way to report water leaks, flooding and blocked drains.

The online tool allows people to pinpoint a problem on a map and describe what they have seen. Reports are then sent directly to Mr Tugendhat, who says the information will help identify persistent problems and put pressure on water companies to take action.

Mr Tugendhat said residents should not assume that someone else has already reported an issue.

Water Watch is available through Tom Tugendhat’s website, where residents can report problems in their area.

The announcement comes after a particularly difficult period for water customers in Tonbridge, with at least two major supply outages affecting the town in August alone, both connected to problems involving water mains on or around Shipbourne Road.

The first major incident began on the morning of Saturday 1 August, when a burst water main caused widespread flooding and left thousands of homes across Tonbridge either without water or experiencing severely reduced pressure. What initially appeared to be an emergency repair developed into a complex operation, with engineers encountering concrete, nearby high-voltage cables and equipment problems as they worked to reach and repair the damaged pipe.

The disruption lasted for almost 48 hours, with supplies gradually being restored on the morning of Monday 3 August. At one stage, more than 5,000 homes had been brought back into supply, but 2,564 properties in Tonbridge were still experiencing low pressure or had no water.

Emergency bottled-water stations were opened, including at Sovereign Way East Car Park and Tonbridge Farm Sports Centre, while some vulnerable customers received deliveries directly to their homes. For residents, however, the impact went well beyond simply having to wait for a tap to start running again. Families were left dealing with the practical difficulties of washing, cooking, flushing toilets and caring for children without a reliable water supply for much of the weekend.

Just days later, the problem struck again.

On 8 August, another burst water main on Shipbourne Road left around 3,500 homes without water, bringing fresh disruption to an area that had only recently begun to recover from the previous incident. The second outage inevitably intensified concerns among residents about the reliability of the local water network and whether the underlying problems were being properly addressed.

It is against that backdrop that Tom Tugendhat’s announcement has received a broadly positive response. Residents responding to the news welcomed the fact that the issue was being actively pursued and that there appeared to be a clearer route for problems to be reported and addressed.

One resident, anticipated that the new system could prove popular, commenting: “That’s gonna get busy Tom! (And thanks)”.

Others, however, were more cautious. One resident pointed to what they described as a problem previously reported to South East Water, saying that they had reported a leak in Tonbridge around ten days earlier and that the situation had since become “much worse”, with no action yet taken.

Another resident replied that while there were understandable reasons to remain sceptical, “it’s better than nothing”, adding that Tonbridge at least had an MP willing to be proactive about the issue.

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