I am calling on David Hinton, the CEO of South East Water, to resign. 24,000 properties have endured three days of South East Water’s chaotic emergency response and woeful communication. It’s an utter disgrace and a total failure of leadership by David Hinton. Every announcement by the company over the last few days telling customers when water supplies would be restored has been wrong. We’ve had endless announcements each giving a different time for water supplies returning. Initially residents in Tunbridge Wells were told to collect bottled water from another town. Then bottled water stations were only set up in central Tunbridge Wells on my instigation. This incident has caused chaos, anger and anxiety for people. Primary and secondary schools are closed. GP surgeries and civil buildings are closed. Businesses have been unable to trade on one of the busiest trading days of the year. Restaurants and hotels have lost thousands of pounds. Care homes and vulnerable people have been left without water for hours, with many contacting me personally to get bottled water delivered to them because South East Water’s phone lines were too busy. Roads have been gridlocked for hours as people queued to access water distribution sites. When I was elected last year, David Hinton gave personal and public assurances that the lessons of previous water outages in Tunbridge Wells had been learnt. In 2022, water was cut off for 6 days over Christmas; we’ve been here before and he vowed to fix things so it couldn’t happen again. We now know that is not true. From the failure to provide sufficient resilience in the local network, to the terrible communications with the community, to putting in place any emergency response plan – the CEO hasn’t kept his promises to the people of Tunbridge Wells. David Hinton must resign, and if he had any integrity he would do so immediately.