Welcome to our performance report for 2024/25
We’ve made considerable progress delivering on the commitments we set out in our five-year plan, but have been severely stretched by unprecedented operational challenges along the way. The impact of these is ongoing and further challenges lie ahead. However, we remain determined to do everything we can to secure the future of water resources in the South East while protecting and improving the environment.
We continue to invest significantly in new and existing infrastructure and environmental projects while dealing with the day-to-day operational challenges of providing a first-class drinking water service to our 2.3 million customers.
We have brought forward and prioritised investment in important engineering projects to restore resilience and boost flexibility in the parts of our supply system that are most under stress.
We’re doing more than ever to support our customers, especially those in our society who are vulnerable, and to protect and enhance the environment through our proactive, industry-leading environmental programme. However, we know we need to go further and faster to tackle the challenges we face now and those that lie ahead, including the accelerated impact of climate change.
That’s why we submitted our boldest and most ambitious business plan ever to Ofwat for the 2025 to 2030 business plan period (AMP8). This proposed a headline investment of £2.1 billion over the next five years to improve customer service, reduce customer supply interruptions and strengthen network resilience through investment in critical infrastructure
Ofwat’s Final Determination of our plan was published in December. This was 13 per cent or £0.3 billion less than we proposed in our business plan and, as a result, we have asked Ofwat to refer its Final Determination to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for a new, independent review in the best interest of customers.
This was not a decision we took lightly, but is absolutely necessary if we are to meet the resilience and investment challenges facing the South East. We hope for a decision by the end of 2025 to enable us to reflect any changes to our investment plans and customer charging in Year 2 of AMP8.
The biggest challenge we face remains the accelerated impact of climate change and how we tackle this. Climate change is causing more frequent and severe weather events, such as prolonged hot periods and heatwaves which cause sudden and substantial increases in peak demand and droughts. It’s also causing heavy rainfall, flooding and storms. These impact water availability or quality, and the operation of our assets.
In the past year, we’ve had the disruptive Storm Bert in November and the driest March since 1961 in the South East, with only 12 per cent of the long-term average rainfall recorded.
Despite these challenges, we have taken positive action to strengthen resilience, boost the flexibility of our network and protect water supplies for customers. We have gone above and beyond what the regulator Ofwat determined we could spend between 2020 and 2025 to do this, investing £567 million in the water infrastructure of the South East of England.
I thank our staff, contractors and partners for tackling head-on every challenge we’ve faced over the last five years, ensuring we’ve been able to keep taps flowing for the vast majority of our customers, even during extreme weather events.
We know there have been times when supplies have been interrupted, and we apologise unreservedly to customers who’ve been without running water for any length of time. We always do our best to resolve issues as quickly as possible and to keep customers informed during incidents.
In October we published our Water Resources Management Plan 2024 (WRMP24). This explains how we’ll provide a reliable and resilient supply of top-quality drinking water over the next 50 years. We know we need to balance this with the challenge of protecting and enhancing the environment around us for generations to come. We aim to do this by investing in new infrastructure, including the new Broad Oak reservoir in Kent, reducing leakage and encouraging water efficiency.
Leakage remains a high priority for us. Although we are still playing catch-up from the impact of extreme weather events in recent years, we’ve repaired 12 per cent more leaks in the last year, compared to the three-year average, and have a leakage recovery plan in place. We spend around £40 million a year on finding and fixing leaks across our network and our planned investment in a smart network programme will help us to run a more efficient leakage reduction programme in the future.
Summary tables
Below you’ll find our summary tables for each group of measures providing an overview of our performance for this year.
TBC = Ofwat will review our performance against the rest of the industry and inform us of our ranking and the resulting incentive.
To see previous years performance, please click on that particular measure.
* These are forecast underperformance payments.
Outcome
Unit
2023/24 performance
2024/25 performance target
2024/25 performance
Incentive type and £
Hectares
11,880.93
14,217
15,098
Outperformance 0.386
Months delayed
-2 (2 months ahead)
0
-4 (4 months ahead)
Outperformance 0.597
Outcome
Unit
2023/24 performance
2024/25 target
2024/25 performance
Score out of 5
4.3
4.5
4.3
Score out of 5
4.1
4.5
4.1
Score out of 5
3.3
4.1
3.5
Score out of 5
3.4
4.0
3.5
Commitment
Unit
2023/24 Performance
2024/25 Performance
Responsible business commitments
Develop a future generation schools programme
Create more partnership community projects on water use and vulnerability
Support the tap water refill campaign to reduce plastic bottled water
Play an active role regionally in relation to the impact of housing growth
Improving health safety and wellbeing of our people and communities
Ensure fair pay, reward and recognition for all our employees