Local · England
Kent
Who to call and where to check in Kent when the power goes off, rivers rise or a storm is coming: official links and figures, each with its source.
If someone’s life is in danger, call 999. For a power cut, call 105. This page lists official sources and figures. It does not say how safe or risky anywhere is.
At a glance
- Type
- County council
- ONS code
- E10000016
- Area
- 3,545 km²
- Region
- South East
- District councils
- 12
- Fire and rescue
- Kent
- Police
- Kent
- Emergency planning partnership
- Kent Local Resilience Forum
- Largest built-up areas
- Maidstone, Ashford (Ashford), Dartford and Sittingbourne
Council emergency pages
- Council website kent.gov.uk
- Emergency planning kent.gov.uk
- Gritting and winter roads kent.gov.uk
- Current emergencies and severe weather Same page as above.
Councils announce rest centres, road closures and emergency help on these pages and their social media. Find your council by postcode (GOV.UK).
Power cuts
Report a power cut or check one: call 105 free from any phone, or use the operator’s website.
Network operator (not your supplier):
- UK Power Networks (South East England)
Ofgem’s figures for the whole licence area, April 2024 to March 2025, counting cuts of 3 minutes or longer:
- South East England (UK Power Networks): 42.2 interruptions per 100 customers and 30.4 minutes without power per customer (2023/24: 49.5 and 36.5)
Great Britain as a whole: 39.7 and 35.1. These are area averages, not figures for Kent alone. About this dataset
Flooding
Environment Agency: 33 flood alert areas and 70 flood warning areas overlap Kent. Waters named: English Channel, South Coast, New Romney Sewage Arm, Teise, River Medway, Speringbrook Sewer Hamstreet Arm.
Warning areas include: Aylesford Stream; Chislet Marshes and Wade Marsh; Coast at Ramsgate; Coast at St Margaret's at Cliffe, Dover, Folkestone and Sandgate; Coast from Dungeness to Rye; Coast from Folkestone to St Mary's Bay; Coast from Kemsley to Seasalter; Coast from Littlestone Golf Course to Dungeness; and 62 more.
Check for flooding now · Sign up for free flood warnings (GOV.UK). Floodline: 0345 988 1188.
Weather warnings
The Met Office issues yellow, amber and red warnings for rain, wind, snow, ice, fog, thunderstorms and extreme heat. Current Met Office warnings (choose South East on the map) · What the colours mean
Health: NHS help and the nearest A&E
For urgent medical help that is not life-threatening, use NHS 111 online or call 111. Find urgent and emergency care services · Find NHS services near you (NHS website)
The nearest type 1 (major) A&E departments to the centre of each of the largest built-up areas, by straight-line distance (as the crow flies, not by road):
- Maidstone: Maidstone Hospital (2.6 km); Medway Maritime Hospital (12.3 km); Tunbridge Wells Hospital (20.1 km).
- Ashford (Ashford): William Harvey Hospital (2.9 km); Maidstone Hospital (31.0 km).
- Dartford: Darent Valley Hospital (2.0 km); Queen Elizabeth Hospital (13.4 km).
We have not found an open official list of urgent treatment centres and minor injury units for England, so they are not shown here.
Never Caught Out is not affiliated with the NHS.
Water supply
More than one company supplies parts of Kent:
- South East Water (about 63% of the area) · Water latest
- Southern Water (about 17% of the area) · Works or issues in my area
- Affinity Water (about 12% of the area) · Supply interruptions
- Thames Water (about 6% of the area) · Network latest
- SES Water (about 2% of the area) · Work in your area
To report no water, low pressure or a burst main, use the company’s page above. Your water bill names your supplier.
Water resource zones covering Kent: Ashford (8) (South East Water, about 31% of the area); Cranbrook (7) (South East Water, about 14% of the area); Maidstone (6) (South East Water, about 12% of the area); 7 Dour (Affinity Water, about 12% of the area); Kent Thannet (Southern Water, about 10% of the area); Tunbridge Wells (1) (South East Water, about 6% of the area); London (Thames Water, about 6% of the area); Kent Medway West (Southern Water, about 5% of the area); SES Water (SES Water, about 2% of the area); Kent Medway East (Southern Water, about 2% of the area). What a water resource zone is
Local risks and emergency planning
- Coast: about 530 km of the council boundary is shoreline at mean high water, by our measurement (this includes tidal estuaries). Coastal flooding and storm surges are possible; the flood areas above include any coastal ones.
- Flooding: 70 flood warning areas and 33 flood alert areas overlap the council area (details above).
- Kent Local Resilience Forum publishes a community risk register: the official list of emergencies that planners prepare for here. The register document.
- Hazards the register names include (our grouping of its wording): Flooding; Industrial and chemical accidents; Storms and severe weather; Transport accidents; Animal disease; Cyber attacks; Snow and low temperatures; Loss of water supply; Pandemic; Telecoms failure; Terrorism; Outbreaks of infectious disease; Power cuts; Fuel shortages; Poor air quality; Volcanic eruption; Building collapse. Open the register for how likely and how serious each one is judged to be.
We list only what official sources say. We do not rate how safe or risky anywhere is.
Map
Phone and broadband coverage
Ofcom’s predictions of normal coverage in Kent, January 2026. They are not live outages and not a guarantee for any address.
- Homes and businesses with 4G indoors from all four networks: 84%; from none: 0.3%.
- Outside homes and businesses, 4G from all four networks: 99%; from none: less than 0.1%.
- Land area with outdoor 4G from all four networks: 93%; from none: 0.2%.
- Premises that can get gigabit-capable broadband: 80%.
- Premises that cannot get decent broadband (10 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up) from a fixed line or fixed wireless: 893 (0.1%).
Check an address on Ofcom’s coverage checker · Phones when the network is down: how to reach 999 · About this dataset
Local radio
This is the BBC station for the county or area, from the BBC Sounds station list. Coverage overlaps council boundaries, so tune to whichever station you receive.
Census 2021: planning prompts
- Households with no car or van: 17.5%
- Residents aged 65 or over: 20.3%
- Households of one person aged 66 or over: 13.7%
Who would fetch food or medicines for you or a neighbour on icy or flooded roads, and who would you check on in a power cut? Ask your pharmacist about repeat prescriptions before bad weather.
Largest built-up areas
- Maidstone
- Ashford (Ashford)
- Dartford
- Sittingbourne
Other built-up areas include Canterbury, Margate, Folkestone, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Sevenoaks and Gravesend.
District councils in Kent
Kent County Council runs county services such as roads, gritting and social care. These district councils run local services such as bin collections and housing, and have their own emergency pages:
Neighbouring councils
Guides for any emergency
- Power cut: call 105 free. Priority Services Register · Compensation calculator
- Power cuts
- First hour of a power cut
- Flooding
- Flood alerts and warnings
- Storms
- Cold weather
- Grab bag and evacuation
- Emergency Alerts
- A battery or wind-up radio keeps working in a power cut.
- All council pages in England · All UK council pages
How these figures were gathered
- Council links come from GOV.UK Local Links Manager, the list councils keep for GOV.UK. We opened each one on 2 November 2026; links that no longer worked are left out, and a few council sites blocked our automated check, which is noted beside the link.
- Area is our measurement of the ONS generalised (clipped to the coastline) boundary, so it can differ slightly from official area figures.
- A flood area counts as overlapping if at least 1% of it lies inside the council boundary.
- A&E distances are straight lines from the centre point ONS gives for each built-up area to the centre of the hospital’s postcode. Travel distances and times will be longer.
- Water resource zones are listed when at least 1% of the council’s area falls inside them. The Environment Agency says the zone map is for mapping only, not for checking a property.
- Phone and broadband figures are Ofcom’s council-level predictions for January 2026. Mobile coverage uses Ofcom’s signal thresholds; an operator’s network counts if its predicted signal meets them. For a county council area they are our premises-weighted combination of its districts’ figures.
- Coastline is our measurement of the ONS boundary clipped to mean high water, where it is not shared with another council. It includes estuary shores, so it is longer than the open coast; we only mention it above 20 km.
- The hazard list is our grouping of the words the register uses: we list a hazard when its terms appear at least twice in the register’s text. It is not a rating of risk, and the register may cover more.
- Census figures are planning prompts, not risk scores. The household figure uses 66 and over, as the census tables do. For a county council area they are our sums of its districts’ census counts.
- Built-up areas are the largest by land area from ONS Built-up Areas 2022. Flood areas listed under a town are those whose official name includes it; a missing area does not mean a street will not flood.
Official sources we used
- Find your local council (GOV.UK; council links from GOV.UK Local Links Manager) (GOV.UK)
- Local authority district to fire and rescue authority, police force area, region and local resilience forum lookups (2025) (ONS Open Geography Portal)
- Map data and tiles (Open Database Licence) (OpenStreetMap contributors)
- RIIO-2 Electricity Distribution annual report 2024 to 2025: supplementary data file (Open Government Licence) (Ofgem)
- 105: the power cut helpline (Energy Networks Association)
- UK Power Networks: power cuts (UK Power Networks)
- Find my network operator (licence area boundaries) (Energy Networks Association)
- Real-time flood-monitoring API: flood areas (Environment Agency)
- Check for flooding (GOV.UK / Environment Agency)
- Sign up for flood warnings (Floodline 0345 988 1188) (GOV.UK / Environment Agency)
- UK weather warnings (Met Office)
- List of A&E type 1 departments (April 2026) (NHS England)
- Postcode locations (OS OpenData licence; contains Ordnance Survey, Royal Mail and National Statistics data) (postcodes.io)
- NHS 111 online (NHS England)
- Find NHS services (NHS website)
- South East Water: Water latest (South East Water)
- Southern Water: Works or issues in my area (Southern Water)
- Affinity Water: Supply interruptions (Affinity Water)
- Thames Water: Network latest (Thames Water)
- SES Water: Work in your area (SES Water)
- Water Resource Zones (Open Government Licence; contains Environment Agency information © Environment Agency and/or database rights; some information © water companies) (Environment Agency)
- Find your water company (regions served) (CCW (Consumer Council for Water))
- Connected Nations update: Spring 2026, mobile and fixed coverage data (Open Government Licence) (Ofcom)
- Stations (local and nations radio) (BBC Sounds)
- BBC Radio Kent: listen live (BBC Sounds)
- Kent Local Resilience Forum: community risk register (Kent Local Resilience Forum)
- Kent Local Resilience Forum: community risk register (Kent Local Resilience Forum)
- Local resilience forums: contact details (Cabinet Office)
- Census 2021 TS045: Car or van availability (ONS via Nomis)
- Census 2021 TS007A: Age by five-year age bands (ONS via Nomis)
- Census 2021 TS003: Household composition (ONS via Nomis)
- Built-up Areas (December 2022) GB boundaries (ONS Open Geography Portal)
- Check for flooding: flood areas (Environment Agency)
- Understand how your council works (GOV.UK)