We see ourselves as guardians of the environment and a key part of that is maintaining and enhancing the natural world around us.
Every day we strike that delicate balance of only taking the water we need while also leaving plenty so the environment can continue to thrive.
The Abstraction Incentive Mechanism (AIM) encourages water companies to reduce the environmental impact abstraction has in environmentally sensitive areas during periods of low surface water flow.
There are three points where we abstract water from rivers which are in environmentally sensitive areas – Kingston and Charing in Kent as well as and Itchel in Hampshire. We are committed to reducing the amount of water we take from these rivers so we do not over abstract.
These sites each have over abstraction trigger points, and we have committed to not reach these trigger points throughout the 2020 to 2025 period.
A negative AIM score is what we are trying to achieve, signifying average abstraction is less than the baseline.
How have we performed?
For the 2023/24 reporting period, we have achieved a final score of 141.87 Ml.
Regular monitoring of each AIM site will continue to attempt to improve our performance further.
Kingston
AIM was not triggered at any point during the 2023/24 reporting period resulting in an AIM performance score of 0.
Charing
An AIM penalty was incurred on six separate occasions through the 2023/24 reporting period that resulted in an AIM performance of 3.09 Ml, however there was no environmental consequence of these.
Itchel
An AIM penalty was applied to 196 days during 2023/24. The vast majority of these events occurred during higher customer demand for water, between May and October, with a few sporadic instances being observed in November. Collectively these events resulted in an AIM performance of 138.79 Ml.
Regular monitoring of each AIM site will continue to attempt to improve our performance.