Once a dying fishing port, Whitstable has become a trendy seaside escape for affluent Londoners. But its resurgence is under threat from two failing water companies: South East Water, which left homes dry during a heatwave, and Southern Water, which spills raw sewage into the sea. This article explores the contradictions of a booming town plagued by infrastructure decay, with residents and businesses paying the price for privatization.
Not long ago, Whitstable was a slowly dying fishing port. Today, however, this quaint Roman town on the northern tip of Kent is enjoying a resurgence as a hip seaside playground for affluent young Londoners.
Boarding the coastbound trains from St Pancras on Friday nights, they spend decadent weekends lounging on its Blue Flag beach and washing down Pacific rock oysters - fresh from a farm beside the harbour - with local ales and bottles of fizz. Many incomers have also bought second homes here, or decamped completely, opting to work from cottages and chalets with stunning views of the Swale estuary and with wild swimming, yachting and surfboarding just beyond their doorsteps.
The resort's newfound prosperity is evident from its soaring property prices (even a candy-coloured beach hut at nearby Tankerton Bay now fetches £60,000), vibrant cultural scene, trendy bars and seafood shacks. As planners are set to sanction the building of almost 2,000 new houses in Whitstable by 2043, with new residents swelling its 32,000 population by 15 per cent, this historic maritime town's future might seem assured.
Disgracefully, however, it is being threatened by the shameful ineptitude of the two water companies that serve its residents and businessfolk - or at least purport to do so. In the 37 years since 1989, when England's water industry fell into the hands of private investors - whose only interest was lining their pockets - its list of catastrophic failings has grown exponentially.
The latest villains are South West Water, fined £1.8 million this week for allowing cryptosporidium from animal faeces to contaminate drinking water in Devon; and South East Water (SEW), whose woeful inability to cope with increased demand during the recent heatwave caused taps to run dry in 22,000 properties across Kent. An Environment Agency operative clears obstructions from the barrier at the Swalecliffe Brook close to the sewage treatment works A candy-coloured beach hut at nearby Tankerton Bay now goes for £60,000 Among the towns to thirst and rage through last week's unforewarned outage was Whitstable - which surely epitomises the scandalous state of our water industry more starkly than anywhere else in England.
For this newly chic resort is being caught between two serially failing water companies: SEW - the devils who repeatedly leave residents and businesses without supplies - and Southern Water (SW), which handles its waste disposal with similar ineptitude, and is quietly turning its seemingly pristine bathing water into a dirty brown sea. This week, local anger was trained on the former company, whose ludicrous inability to provide water during a mini heatwave that brought tourists flocking has cost traders an untold fortune.
On Tuesday, however, just as the tap water was beginning to flow again, another ongoing scandal was returning to haunt Whitstable with a filthy vengeance. Strolling eastward along the gently curving coastal path to Tankerton Bay, the vista was glorious and quintessentially English. I passed a flotilla of moored racing yachts, and those expensive beach huts, and marvelled at the distant Maunsell sea forts - tripodic towers built to repel Luftwaffe bombers during the Second World War.
Then I reached Long Rock, a salty wilderness designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its colonies of roosting plovers and purple sandpipers, and a rare species of estuarine moth that lays its eggs in the thick clumps of fennel. It all looked so reassuringly unsullied - a place to reinvigorate the people who had gravitated here: dog walkers, families picnicking in the shelter of wooden groynes as their children paddled in the shallows, and one or two hardy swimmers.
Regrettably, however, this stunning stretch of the Swale estuary is not nearly as pure as it appears. Join the discussionShould water companies face jail time for polluting beaches while leaving homes without running water? What's your view?
A dried up pond at Swalecliffe Brook Nature Reserve close to the sewage treatment works Fed-up residents of Whitstable took to the sea in protest at a week of water shortages across the area Only those who had troubled to log on to Southern Water's website to check its Rivers and Seas Watch portal would have known it, but anyone splashing in the tide there on Tuesday could have been risking their health. A few yards from Tankerton Beach lies the company's Swalecliffe Wastewater Treatment Works, the stench from which fugs the sea air on breezy days.
And it takes only a modest amount of rain to expose its ineffectiveness. Late on Monday, the hot weather broke. Records show that 10.74mm of rain fell. Even this was enough for raw sewage to start spewing into the sea at 7.55am on Tuesday, via a locally notorious outfall pipe called Swalecliffe No.1.
This recurring discharge not only threatens the health of swimmers and wildlife but also undermines the town's hard-won reputation as a clean, desirable destination. Local businesses, already reeling from lost revenue during the water outage, now face the prospect of further losses if the beach is closed due to pollution. Environmental groups have condemned both SEW and SW for prioritizing profits over public safety and environmental protection.
They point to decades of underinvestment in infrastructure, with aging pipes and treatment plants struggling to cope with increased demand from new housing and tourism. The situation has sparked outspoken criticism from residents and local councillors, who call for the water companies to be stripped of their licenses or renationalized. Yet the government has so far resisted such drastic measures, instead imposing fines that critics say are too small to deter repeat offenses.
As Whitstable braces for another summer influx, the question remains: can this charming seaside town continue to thrive while its vital water services remain in the hands of companies that seem incapable of delivering clean water and safe sewage disposal? The answer, for now, is as murky as the brown sea lapping against its shores
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