Water Supply in Kent Debate

On Wednesday 9th of June 2026, there was a Westminster hall Debate on Water Supply in Kent. Here is the speech I was due to give...

"I thank my colleague from neighbouring Ashford for securing this debate.

Kent has so often been left out of wider national conversations about major infrastructure. Even during the hugely fun Brexit years, raising the specific problems caused by Operation Brock, new customs arrangements and other aspects, that were unique to our geography, often fell on deaf and uninterested ears.

This is important, because our geographical location, an area that is not always easy to access or for simple solutions to logistical utilities problem, plays a part in why we have long-term issues that have not been addressed by various Governments offering short term solutions – sticking plaster solutions.

Our housing, demographic, workforce, connectivity, climate and water conundrums are all closely interconnected. If I had much longer, I could draw Venn diagrams or expand on this for hours. But as someone who has lived in the beautiful Roman city of Canterbury for 28 years, I know that there are issues that we face that are nothing like as straightforward or simple to tackle as in other places – and water is one such problem. Yes, my constituents largely agree with me and local or national campaigners leading the cause, we must stop this privatised, profit driven model that benefits shareholders and multi-national corporations based overseas. We must return power to customers, as well as responsibility and accountability to Government. But until then, we have a huge clash between increasing demand, rising temperatures and what amounts to empty water tanks that serve the Whitstable area of my constituency.

Frequently now, our beautiful, bustling and extremely popular coastal town is subjected to water outages – droughts - essentially every time we glimpse the sun. As well as households, families, elderly people living alone; care homes and businesses are also hit by these events which immediately presses the pause button on our ability to function.

At the height of what should have been a peak week for excellent local hotels, pubs, restaurants and cafes, the tills and doors were forced to shut yet again. Instead of enjoying a delicious handmade pizza at award winning Nomad Pizza, a glass of Simpsons in the stunning gardens of the Crescent Turner Hotel or a much-needed chat over a coffee at Café Revival, visitors and residents were stuck at home testing their taps or spending their money in supermarkets instead of being able to support local independent businesses.

One hot week in May!

And when me and my neighbouring MPs from Faversham and Herne Bay, ask beleaguered management at South East Water what we can expect when proper summer begins, or more heat waves occur, they simply cannot reassure us that we are not going to face the same problems again.

I don’t know what to tell local firms, care homes and wedding venues. Do they just give up and cancel bookings? Or try to seek compensation – which nobody at South East Water cannot ever seem to answer for. Last June, businesses lost thousands and yet are still trying to receive anything back in terms of lost revenue.

And the huge potential crisis of additional strain being layered on top of these already far too frequent incidents… thousands of new houses.

Whether concreting over our precious green spaces or squashed into our traffic heavy city centre, we simply cannot sustain this extra demand on our creaking and inadequate water supply. When speaking to South East Water, they tell us they don’t know how they can possibly meet this extra demand. It’s fairly basic maths, if you don’t have enough water to supply, homes, businesses, and the tanks are either empty or already incredibly low, increasing the demand creates an impossible problem to solve.

Of course I understand when our local Labour-led city council states that their housing targets are being set by this Government. But when MPs and residents object, it is not because we’re ‘nimbys’ or crazed newt-loving activists who don’t care about those who need a home. It’s because we are all too aware of the price we are paying – not enough water, loss of nature, and unattractive housing squashed into the wrong places.

And the Government hasn’t got anywhere near to meeting their own embarrassingly vacuous ‘build baby build’ targets anyway.

Local councils must work in conjunction with water companies and tell the Government that we need their intervention to supply water before a single brick is put in place.

As it is the reservoir we’ve been promised for at least 50 years is at least a decade away from being up and running.

Kent needs basic Government help and support; not targets we cannot meet. I invite anyone from the Government to come and see for themselves exactly what waits around the corner, if we have another heat wave, help us help our residents and businesses from further suffering this summer."