Thriving environment

Our business is intrinsically linked to the environment as we rely on it for our raw product, water. For this reason we do all we can to ensure there is a clean, resilient and sustainable supply available for current and future water customers whilst ensuring there is enough water available to support the needs of the environment too. Click 'Discover More' to find out more from our Head of Environment, Emma Goddard.

Low carbon sustainable business

We’re committed to playing our part to tackle the causes of climate change and transitioning to low-carbon operations, achieving net zero by 2030. Click ‘Discover more’ to find out more from our Carbon Strategy and Economic Manager, Matt Hersey.

Securing the future of water

Resilient water resources are needed to ensure we have enough water to supply our customers into the future, while ensuring enough remains in the environment so habitats can thrive. Click ‘Discover more’ to find out more from our Head of Water Resources, Nick Price.

Future ready business

Our people are dedicated to providing you with the best service possible, whether they’re out in the field searching for leaks, managing our operational sites, testing the quality of your water or answering your queries. Each and every person within the business is dedicated to delivering you the safe reliable tap water supply you expect. Click 'Discover more' to find out more from our Head of HR, Sian Jenkins.

Introduction by Oliver Martin, Regulation and Strategy Director

A safe, reliable supply of drinking water to homes and commercial premises across our region is at the very heart of our business.

By improving the resilience and flexibility of our network and operations, we can face future challenges head-on, while offering customers a better service.

Our investment in infrastructure is driven by the need to provide a resilient supply of top-quality drinking water.

A £6 million project to reconfigure the network and install additional booster pumping at Barcombe treatment works in Sussex is progressing well, as is a major upgrade at Tilford Meads treatment works. At Maidenhead we’ve designed a more sustainable and cost-effective solution to tackle high chromium levels in the groundwater too all of which will improve the quality of water being provided to our customers.

We started a £12 million project to create a more resilient water supply network within Wealden. In a direct response to recent incidents, we’re installing 17km of new pipeline between our Bewl treatment works and drinking water storage tanks at Wadhurst and Rotherfield. Once complete we’ll be able to supply communities affected by recent incidents directly from our water treatment works at Bewl, improving our resilience.

Over the year we’ve flushed more than 800km of water mains to remove deposits which build up over time. This helps to protect the quality of our drinking water. We’ve also performed strongly against our water quality target and industry average in the DWI’s Compliance Risk Index performance measure. For the third year running our performance has put us among the top five water companies. We’ve also outperformed our targets for customer contacts about water quality issues.

Communication with customers is a vital part of handling incidents. We’ve launched the second phase of our new AquAlerter messaging system which enables us to send tailored messages and updates to many more customers. The new system has been well received by customers.

We’ve successfully trialled a new weather forecasting system with the Met Office to better predict shifts in temperature allowing us to respond quicker and reduce customer impact during freeze thaw events. We’ll continue to use data and insight in this way.

Although it’s been one of the wettest winters on record, we minimised the impact on our customers from storms and floods by learning lessons from previous events, working with local resilience forums and taking flood prevention measures. In Alfriston we reduced the impact of technical problems caused by downpours and flooding by deploying containerised water quality filter units we’d bought in advance. We also used tankers to inject water into the network and re-zoned many customers onto other parts of our water network.

We’ve also appointed a permanent Alternate Water Manager to oversee the roll-out of bottled water stations and alternate water supplies during incidents and invested in purchasing 10 more water tankers to boost capacity (taking our capacity to 12), These tankers will also be able to   inject water into local networks when supplies are interrupted. Potentially alleviating the need to have so many bottled water stations in the future when an incident occurs.

Planning ahead means we’re better prepared. That’s why we also practice emergency plans. In the past year we participated in an exercise involving a live deployment to a local hospital to prove it would work in a real emergency. We also took part in a winter coastal flooding exercise.

Our key measures

Licence breaches

We are compliant with other statutory obligations and licence conditions

We expect ourselves to be compliant with all our statutory obligations and licences at all times and to have zero breaches. We define breaches by the number of prosecutions and enforcement actions taken out against us during the year.

Drone

We are compliant with national security obligations

The security surrounding the supply of water to all our customers is something we take extremely seriously. As one of our Key Performance Indicators, we expect to be compliant with all our security obligations and have zero breaches.

gap site

Gap sites

Gap sites are those residential properties which are occupied, not billed and are not recorded on our billing database.

meter

Voids – business properties

Business properties which are void are those which are connected to mains water and/or sewerage systems but are not charged because they are recorded as empty.

shower

Voids – household

Void household properties are those which are connected to mains water and/or sewerage systems but are not charged because they are believed to be empty.

Properties at risk of low pressure

Properties at risk of low pressure

It is extremely important to us that you receive a water supply with adequate water pressure behind it. Measured by properties for every 10,000 connections, our target, which is based on previous performance, is to have a maximum of 0.5 properties at risk of low pressure.

Working at a water treatment works

Unplanned outage of water treatment works

Just as important as maintaining our pipeline network, is maintaining our water treatment assets. We report both unexpected asset failures as well as those when a site is out of service due to planned maintenance and improvement work.

Laying a new water pipe

Water mains repairs

This outcome measures how many repairs have been made for each 1,000 kilometres of pipeline we operate.

Interruptions to customers' water supply

Interruptions to customers’ water supply

Despite our ongoing programme to upgrade our infrastructure, burst pipes, site failures or third party damage to our network can sometimes happen.

Tap water

Taste and odour of water

We want to make sure the water you receive tastes and smells as it should. Our target is to receive less than 0.38 contacts per 1,000 customers.

Appearance of tap water

Appearance of tap water

It is important that you receive crystal clear drinking water each time you turn on the tap. One of the ways we monitor whether that’s happening is to record the number of times we’re contacted with concerns about how the water looks.

Bottled water

Event Risk Index (ERI)

Monitored by the Drinking Water Inspectorate, this measure focusses on proactively reducing incident risks relating to water quality.

Maintenance

Compliance Risk Index (CRI)

Monitored by the Drinking Water Inspectorate, this new measure is focused on maintaining the quality of your treated drinking water.