Drought leaves thousands without water and sparks reservoir building debate

A prolonged dry summer has left much of south east England parched, with drone footage revealing brown fields, cracked earth and shrivelled vegetation across Kent, Sussex and Surrey. The images, captured from the Surrey Hills to the cliffs of Seaford Head, show familiar landmarks rising out of unfamiliar landscapes. At Hever Castle in Kent, the grass has been left to go brown, while at Pykeham Golf Course on the South Downs, only the greens are watered to keep them playable. Even the vines at Ridgeview near Ditchling, which normally love the sun, are struggling: the grapes are smaller and the harvest will be lighter, though sugar levels are higher, promising an interesting vintage.

But the drought has also exposed a more immediate crisis: thousands of homes in Kent have been left without running water. South East Water has apologised for the disruption, blaming hot weather, high demand and burst pipes. At the peak, around 8,000 properties were affected in places like Whitstable, Cranbrook and Canterbury. Some residents in Benenden have been without water for eight days, six days longer than they were initially told. They have resorted to bottled water for everything from making tea to flushing the toilet. One resident described the situation as "extraordinary", noting that the company's explanation of increased demand does not address the underlying problem. "This has been going on for four years now and this is about the eighth time this year," she said. "What they're doing is they're just using plasters to stick on a problem as opposed to looking at the future proofing of water."

The government has condemned South East Water as "simply not good enough", and the company has warned that water levels in its drinking storage tanks remain critically low. Hundreds of customers are still without water and have been urged to use it only for essential purposes. The crisis has reignited a wider debate about the UK's water infrastructure. According to experts, the country has not built a new large reservoir since the 1990s, and the last major wave of construction ended in the 1970s. Since privatisation, no new reservoir project was started until now. Portsmouth Water's Havant Thicket reservoir in Hampshire is the first under construction for 35 years. It is designed to hold up to 9 billion litres of water, but it is only one of a handful of schemes in the pipeline.

Forecasts suggest the UK will need an extra 5 billion litres of water a day by 2050, driven by population growth and new demand from data centres. Even if all ten proposed reservoirs are built on time, they would provide only an extra 700 million litres a day, far short of what is needed. The government has designated some reservoirs as nationally significant infrastructure projects to speed up planning, but this applies to only two of the ten. Proposals for a water grid to move water from the wetter north and west to the drier south are being discussed, but they are expensive and complex. As one expert put it, "we can't wait another 35 years to sort out" the problem. The rain that finally arrived this week will help restore some green, but it will take a sustained period of above-average rainfall to make up for the long dry summer. The question is whether the UK's water system can be made resilient enough to cope with the more extreme weather that climate change is expected to bring.