Water, water, everywhere? Delivering resilient water and wastewater services 2017-18

We have published our latest report on resilience, which explores water companies’ performance and overall trends in key areas including leakage, sewer flooding, water consumption, drinking water quality and supply interruptions.

Key findings:

• Overall leakage levels rose by 1.5% in 2017-18. Water companies should take action now to make the reductions in this area that customers expect to see.
• Average water consumption has increased by 0.23% to 141 litres per person, per day – a total rise of 1.14% over the past two years.
• The average amount of time customers were without water more than doubled from 10 minutes 45 seconds in 2016-17 to 22 minutes in 2017-18. This has been mainly driven by the severe cold weather and quick thaw of March 2018, which caused pipes to burst in many regions and highlights that companies need to be better prepared to prevent these spikes.
• Internal sewer flooding has reduced by 36%, while external sewer flooding decreased by 19%. Both have shown an overall downward trend for the past five years.

March’s severe cold weather followed by the hot, dry early summer has highlighted the pressures on our available water resources. CCW is calling for water companies to learn lessons from these incidents and act to ensure supplies are resilient and reliable, now and in the long term.