South East Water has carried out another stage in its £4.3 million upgrade of a Kent treatment works near Pembury which supplies 34,000 customers in the Pembury and Tunbridge Wells area.

The company has been able to do most of the work while keeping the treatment works running - the  water treatment works near Tunbridge Wells was shut down last Thursday while engineers worked to upgrade a vital piece of equipment. The upgrade work began in September and the programme of work is due for completion in October.

The site currently treats 10 million litres of water a day  - once the upgrade is finished it will be able to treat 14 million litres a day.

Joe Yip, Delivery Manager at South East Water, said:

“So far we’ve been able to carry out our upgrade while the plant has been running, but yesterday we had to take the treatment works offline. It meant we were able install a new water pump which will push treated water out of the site to a nearby service reservoir, which stores the water until customers need it.”

The company completed the work in under eight hours and the treatment works is now operating as normal.

Kevin Clark, South East Water Regional Production Manager, added:

 “My team which manages the site has been working hard with the engineers to time this work to perfection ensuring that customers’ supplies were not affected while the treatment works was offline."

“Ahead of the work taking place we increased the amount of water treated at the site so the nearby reservoir was full to the brim ensuring there was more than enough water to supply our customers while the treatment works was temporarily switched off.”