A water giant will compensate businesses after thousands were left without water for five days.

Around 32,500 properties in St Leonards and Hastings were affected by the outage which began on May 2 after a main burst in Keeper’s Wood.

Southern Water said it recognised the “disruption and distress” caused by the loss of water supply which affected the May Day bank holiday weekend.

The compensation comes in the form of £1 million, divided up between business, local events and community projects.

During the outage, the impact on businesses was described as “drastic” by East Sussex county councillor Godfrey Daniel.

One hotel in Hastings had resorted to flushing toilets with sea water.

At the time, Jon Smalldon, 46, who has lived in Hastings for ten years, said his family had 24 two-litre bottles of water which they had to ration.

He said: “We have a couple of dogs and a cat as well so they’re now included in the rationing.”

Tim McMahon, Southern Water’s director of water – who led the company’s response to the burst major water main earlier this month – said: “We recognise that the services we provide have not met all of the expectations of our customers in St Leonards and Hastings in recent months – and we are very sorry. 

“This community has faced both weather-related floods and a major loss of water supply, and we have seen the toll this has taken on local businesses and households.

“We accept that we need to put things right so far as the community and businesses in Hastings and St Leonards are concerned, and therefore want to give something back as a meaningful goodwill gesture.

“We care about Hastings and its community, with many of our colleagues working and living in the area, so we hope this gesture will help make a positive difference following such challenging times.” 

The £1 million fund​ will be split as follows:  

  • £120,000 for local festivals and events 
  • £500,000 for community projects, allocated with the support of local partners 
  • £380,000 to support businesses

All businesses which are eligible for support will be contacted directly, and community recipients will be engaged with via Southern Water partners in the coming weeks.