THE government faced calls to remove South East Water’s licence today after its bosses admitted a string of failures when 30,000 people were left without water last winter.

Tunbridge Wells suffered a sustained outage in November and December before thousands of properties across Kent and Sussex saw their supply disrupted in January.

Many people were left without drinking water for days, unable to shower or bathe and could not flush their toilets, while a number of schools were forced to close.

Appearing before the parliamentary environment, food and rural affairs committee today, £400,000-a-year chief executive David Hinton admitted he “got it wrong” by failing to communicate quickly enough during the outages.

Other failings included not spotting issues with infrastructure early enough, poor routine maintenance and a “reactive culture” when it came to problems, he said.

Adopting a more contrite tone after his cagey previous performance before the committee in January, he conceded problems at the Pembury Water Treatment Works — which caused the supply issues in November — were foreseeable.

Mr Hinton also said the company’s performance was “disappointing” when it came to delivering bottled water to vulnerable customers.

The utility firm’s chairman Chris Train revealed that Mr Hinton has surrendered any bonus the board may have chosen to pay him this year, adding that the board had refused to sack any members of the executive team.

Regulator Ofwat announced in March that it plans to fine South East Water £22 million over water supply failures between 2020 and 2023, affecting more than 286,000 people — the second-largest fine ever proposed.

Ofwat’s chief executive Chris Walters told the committee that the regulator is seeing “steps forward being made” by the company since the outages.

We Own It director Cat Hobbs said: “Instead of grilling water bosses, MPs should be grilling the government on why they haven’t removed South East Water’s licence. 

“South East Water has been spending more on dividends than investing in infrastructure. The chairman works for the company’s owners in Australia and Canada, not for the people of Tunbridge Wells.

“The company left 30,000 homes without water, creating a public health emergency. 

“South East Water failed to fulfil its statutory duty. The real question is why hasn’t our government defended households by removing its licence?”