Taste and odour of water

Supplying wholesome drinking water direct to your tap is at the core of what we do, so we want to make sure the water you receive tastes and smells as it should.

One of the ways we track whether that’s happening is to record the number of times we’re contacted with concerns about tap water taste and odour.

Using previous results as a baseline, our target is to receive less than 0.38 contacts per 1,000 customers.

Depending on our score we could receive on outperformance payment or be subject to an underperformance penalty.

How have we performed?

We finished 2023/2024 with a contact rate of 0.30 per 1,000 customers.

This outperformance was due to work we’ve undertaken to optimise the performance of our water treatment works and improve the monitoring and control of our networks.

We will continue educating customers on the importance of using chlorine to disinfect drinking water which is why some may experience a very slight taste of chlorine on occasion.

As the performance during the year is better than our target, we have received a £0.016 million outperformance payment.