The Regulators' Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Development (RAPID) has agreed a request from South East Water to delay its Gate 2 submission for its proposed new reservoir just north of the village of Broad Oak, near Canterbury in Kent.
Image South East Water: still shot from video of 3D reservoir visualisation
The Broad Oak Reservoir is among a number of solutions in the RAPID programme of strategic resource options (SROs).
The water company wrote to Paul Hickey, Managing Director of RAPID, on 22nd December to formally request the delay of its Gate 2 submission from December 2025 to September 2026.
The request followed a previous Checkpoint meeting with the RAPID team – Ben McKellar, South East Water’s project manager for the Broad Oak reservoir explains in the letter:
“The reason for the delay is due to clarification provided by the RAPID team with regards to the Gate 2 assessment requirements as well as some additional optioneering. In order to provide the required information with the latest data we therefore require more time to compile this information.”
Writing in response in a letter dated 29 January, Andy Turner, a Director at RAPID, notes that the request followed a period of discussion with the team and that RAPID were no longer expecting the Gate 2 submission at the original date, saying:
“Given our assessment of the maturity of the Broad Oak solution, and in line with our guidance for solutions joining the RAPID programme, we agreed that the Broad Oak solution can proceed to gate two. This was due to the work that had already been completed before the solution joined the RAPID programme.”
RAPID has allowed the request for additional time in order for South East Water to investigate and identify alternative abstraction points and understand the requirements for pre-treatment.
The letter concludes by saying that Gate two, or equivalent, of the RAPID programme represents an important checkpoint for the solution's development and that South East Water “should use the additional time to prepare a good quality and complete submission that meets regulators’ expectations.”
South East Water has built a bird’s eye view 3D model of the reservoir using gaming technology. The newly-relased video shows the early proposals for Broad Oak Water starting from towards the A291, Herne Bay Road and travelling around the reservoir site back to the main embankment. It is not the final design, but a computer generated visualisation of the early proposals for discussion.
The water company is holding an online Public Engagement Webinar on Zoom on Thursday 12 February from 12pm to 1pm to present the early proposals for Broad Oak Water followed by a Q&A session.
Click here to watch the 3D video model of the reservoir
Click here to register for the Public Engagement Webinar
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