Our performance

What is it and why do we measure it?

This measures the quality of our water. We test water samples and the results give us a Compliance Risk Index (CRI) score. A lower score is better, and our score increases with each quality failure at all points in our water supply system. Water quality compliance is measured and reported on a calendar year basis. 

What’s gone well this quarter?

Compliance Risk Index (CRI) is reported on a calendar year basis, the performance shown here covers Jan-Sept 2023. Performance was impacted in early 2023, due to detections of non-harmful bacteria and aesthetic iron fails at a key water treatment works. Although we're still seeing detections of the non-harmful bacteria, our results are now in line with historical years at the same point in time.

What challenges did we face this quarter?

There were a high number of individual detections of bacteria at Company sites during the quarter. The presence of bacteria is impacted by temperature and so a seasonal variation is expected. In 2023, there have been high levels of rainfall and this has contributed to a relatively raised risk of ingress.

What do we have planned for next quarter?

Investigation of bacteria detections can take some time as an asset may need to be removed from service to allow inspection and this work will continue. We've earmarked a fund to allow more rapid resolution of water main based aesthetic metals issues. We're also beginning an 18-month programme to install new continuous water quality monitoring equipment at our key sites in order support improved optimisation of treatment.

What is it and why do we measure it?

We know that having to cut off the water supply, for any amount of time, impacts on our customers and we want to keep interruptions to supply as low as possible. This performance commitment measures the average supply time lost per customer, across all of our customers, for interruptions that lasted three hours or more.

What’s gone well this quarter?

Internally, we've launched a new incident response dashboard, which went live this last quarter. This gives us visibility of performance and enables a near real time view of whether targets are being met both internally and within our service partners. Reviews of this and learnings help us continue to improve within our response to unplanned events. A number of events that would historically caused widespread long term interruption to supply were reduced due to our ability to respond and our supply restoration teams being deployed.

What challenges did we face this quarter?

A large impacting event due to issues caused at a water treatment works in Scarborough, and the subsequent restarting of the pumps resulted in a trunk mains burst which caused widespread loss of supply to customers in this area. Contingency plans have been put in place to ensure this event would not occur again in the event of a short term water treatment works shutdown. We've also seen an increase in smaller events where repairs and subsequent restoration of supply.

What do we have planned for next quarter?

Our 2020-25 Service Commitment Plan includes a number of sub-DMA (District Metering Areas) mains renewal schemes that will help reduce the frequency of mains failures, and therefore reduce the probability of customers having their supplies interrupted within these areas. As part of our business as usual process we collect data on all supply interruptions and review the critical factors that contribute to these events. This results in learning from past events, actions to ensure these events have a reduced probability occurring in the future and help inform our longer term capital intervention plans.

What is it and why do we measure it?

This measures the amount of water lost between our treatment works and our customers’ taps. Water is precious and it’s important we lose as little as possible, so we work hard to keep this number as low as possible.

We report how much we've reduced our water loss against our long term average of 315.3 megalitres per day. This doesn't include water lost inside buildings and homes.

What’s gone well this quarter?

The weather this summer has been stable and not as hot or dry as previous summers, which can lead to increased bursts or break outs. This has allowed our leakage teams to focus on proactive leakage detection in the summer months, rather than reacting to burst leaks. Our operational Leakage Team are also collaborating closely with our Smart, Calm and Resilient Network Team on delivering leakage reduction.

What challenges did we face this quarter?

The weather this year has been much more supportive to leakage conditions than in previous years. This meant the last quarter hasn’t been as challenging as previous years. The biggest challenge this last quarter has been preparing for the transition of our Repair and Maintenance Contract from a dual to single supplier, which we are expecting to happen during the third quarter of the year.

What do we have planned for next quarter?

We move to re-active leakage detection processes with the increasing number of bursts and breakouts that happen during cold winter months. We're transitioning our Repair and Maintenance (R&M) Contract from a dual to single supplier in December. We anticipate some disruption during this phase, so we've been focusing on reducing leakage over the summer months in preparation for a winter break out happening at the same time as the transition to the sole R&M supplier. Moving to a sole R&M supplier should result in improved repair performance both in quality of repair and timescales to repair.

What is it and why do we measure it?

It’s important that our water treatment works operate reliably. Sometimes our water treatment works shut down because of equipment failures, we call this an 'unplanned outage'. This performance commitment measures the percentage of time are treatment works are down. We want this number to be as low as possible.

What’s gone well this quarter?

Throughout the quarter we've focussed on maximising our water treatment works availability and minimising outage in preparation for winter, which has helped maintain our performance against this commitment.

What challenges did we face this quarter?

Overall, July-September proved to be an excellent month on performance against this commitment. In October and November we had to deal with a couple of named storms which tested our resilience and could have impacted our performance but, due to excellent planning and preparation, we were able to deal with the impact successfully.

What do we have planned for next quarter?

Throughout the next quarter, we'll continue to focus on maximising our water treatment works availability and minimising outage as we go through the Winter months and manage any impact from the colder weather.

What is it and why do we measure it?

We need to look after our water pipes. This performance commitment measures the number of mains repairs we carry out on our clean water mains network per 1,000 km. This number doesn’t include repairs to communication and supply pipes.

What’s gone well this quarter?

We've had 1,085 confirmed mains repairs for Jul-Sep. The regulatory target for these months was a total of 1,217. So, we're under where we need to be for end of the second quarter, which is really pleasing to see.

What challenges did we face this quarter?

Performance is heavily determined by the weather and our continued drive to reduce leakage, which contributes to the number of mains repairs we make. However, with stable weather over the summer and no significantly hot or prolonged dry periods, this has reduced number of weather related bursts and has meant we can continue with proactively finding leaks whilst remaining under target.

What do we have planned for next quarter?

As we are heading in the winter months, the risks to our performance are with any sharp fluctuations in temperature. Whilst this is an element which we cannot control, a stable second quarter has meant we go into this period in a strong position.

What is it and why do we measure it?

Per capita consumption (PCC) is how much water the average person uses each day. It’s important we use water carefully to make sure there’s enough for everyone.

We report how much we've reduced PPC against our long term average. PCC only covers household use.

What’s gone well this quarter?

We've almost completed our work on creating two smart metered District Metering Areas (DMAs) in the Huddersfield area. This will provide us with a full view of leakage and consumption within these DMAs to aid our understanding of the relationship between these in this specific area. We commenced our flow regulator trial with Cenergist which is going well and we have installed over 50% of the assets which will be installed across the trial.

The flow regulator trial with Cenergist is a project where we are installing 1,000 flow regulators on metered household properties, with an aim to regulate the customers pressure to reduce water wastage and consumption, to enable us to meet our long-term goal for PCC.

What challenges did we face this quarter?

Consumption trends in 2023/24 are not in-line with the trends we've seen since 2020. We've seen lower consumption during the summer months due to the colder and wetter weather. As we moved into winter we saw increased consumption in September and October due to the late onset of summer weather. The changes in consumption this year is a challenge as it’s harder to forecast consumption this year due to these changes.

What do we have planned for next quarter?

We're continuing with our Cenergist trial to install 1,000 flow regulators in an area of Leeds, which should be complete by the end of the financial year. Our trial of water efficiency home audits is being restarted in the fourth quarter. This trial was originally started pre-Covid and wasn’t able to be delivered in full, so we're going to finish this trial by conducting 1500 audits on measured households in Yorkshire.

What is it and why do we measure it?

We want to make sure our operations don’t harm the environment. This performance commitment measures the number of pollution incidents caused by our wastewater assets, for every 10,000km of our wastewater network. This is a calendar year measure from January to December.

What’s gone well this quarter?

While our second quarter has been similar to the previous year in terms of overall incidents, we've seen a 35% improvement in pollutions from our sewer network. The sewer network accounts for approximately 40% of total pollution incidents year-on-year. This improved performance gives us confidence in our maintenance plans across our 52,000km of sewers.

What challenges did we face this quarter?

July to September 2023 saw our best quarter performance and lowest number of pollution incidents recorded. This was due to many initiatives which deliver our continued and unwavering commitment to improving the health of Yorkshire’s rivers. However, high rainfall and associated flooding due to storms (Ciaran and Debi) have impacted October and November performance.

What do we have planned for next quarter?

A taskforce focussed specifically to improve performance associated with sewage pumping stations has been created and funding has been assigned for improvements.

What is it and why do we measure it?

Sometimes sewage can flood homes or business. We call this internal sewer flooding and we’re always working hard to lower the number of times this happens. This performance commitment measures the total number of internal sewer flooding incidents through the year per 10,000 sewer connections.

What’s gone well this quarter?

This quarter we've progressed our proactive initiatives that will help us identify blockages and defects before they impact our customers. Our Sewer Maintenance Programme focuses on hotspot areas for sewer flooding and has allowed us to clear 956 blockages and find 1,909 defects proactively during the quarter. We're continuing to install Customer Sewer Alarms (CSA), with over 32,000 installed by the end of the quarter. These devices alert us to problems near customers’ homes and so far has enabled us to proactively clear 949 blockages so far this financial year that could have caused sewer flooding.

Our new blockages campaign went live during this quarter to raise customer awareness and engagement on not flushing unsuitable items such as wipes, sanitary products and fat, oils and grease. This campaign, along with our Network Protection Team working with household and business customers, will help change customer behaviours that contribute to blockages and sewer flooding.

What challenges did we face this quarter?

Some very challenging weather conditions over the quarter led to a significant increase in demand as well as challenging conditions on-site for investigations with exceptionally high rainfall. We're dedicated to recovering this performance with overdriving our proactive programmes and our response to customer issues, and we take encouragement in seeing improvement on performance in recent weeks.

What do we have planned for next quarter?

Internal sewer flooding is a key priority for both us and our customers. We're working hard to remove the risk of sewer flooding and improve our performance. We're enhancing some of our proactive programmes by increasing revisits and installing CSA at our highest risk areas and properties. We'll also be reviewing our methodology with a more targeted approach which will be supported with wider investigations, innovation and investment. We'll continue to educate and engage our customers on not flushing unsuitable items through our "Bin it, don’t block it!" campaign and our Network Protection team.

What is it and why do we measure it?

We want to make sure we don’t harm our environment. We have permits that control our discharges into watercourses. This performance commitment measures the percentage of our treatment works that comply with their discharge permits. This is a calendar year measure from January to December.

What’s gone well this quarter?

For the Calendar year to date, treatment works compliance has been better than our target. For our samples, we only have one failing works at Thirsk Waste Water Treatment Works, but an Environment Agency (EA) sample taken in response to a potential pollution event at Pocklington has also breached the upper tier limit, so we have two failing works against a target of three.

What challenges did we face this quarter?

The EA sample taken during a potential pollution event at Pocklington/STW was in response to a performance deterioration caused by a discharge from a third party. The EA accepted the third party fault challenge for the pollution and are waiting for us to submit a formal challenge for the failing sample. As the cause is the same we are confident we can challenge this event off from our performance.

What do we have planned for next quarter?

We have seven sites which are classed as high risk, where a further sample exceedance would result in a failing works. We have mitigation in place at these sites to ensure they continue to perform well through to the end of the year. We'll also submit the Pocklington challenge which will hopefully return us to a single failing works.

What is it and why do we measure it?

If a part of a sewer collapses, it can block the sewer and lead to sewer flooding or pollution. This performance commitment measures the number of sewer collapses that affect our customers’ supply or the environment, per 1,000 km of our sewer network.

What’s gone well this quarter?

Performance in the last quarter and throughout the year has continued to be strong and we're continuing to see year-on-year improvements, which is really encouraging.

What challenges did we face this quarter?

We've focussed heavily on proactive inspection and refurbishment of the network to improve sewer flooding and pollution performance. This had a knock on benefit of reducing collapses. We've also almost completed the installation of 40,000 customer sewer alarms to alert us to blockages before they impact on customers. This will also have supported with the proactive identification and resolution of defects which will have helped collapses performance.

What do we have planned for next quarter?

We look to maintain this excellent level of performance into the next quarter and beyond. We also hope to start seeing the benefit of the newly installed alarms mentioned above.

What is it and why do we measure it?

Our Priority Services Register offers free extra services for our vulnerable customers who need them. We want to make sure our vulnerable customers are using this service, so this performance commitment measures the percentage of household customers who are getting support from through our Priority Services Register.

What’s gone well this quarter?

We've increased the number of customers on our Priority Services Register by over 80,000 and we're on track to reach our performance commitment target of 9.1% of households registered by the end of the financial year. We're progressing a review of all our priority services to make sure they are meeting customers needs and making process improvements as required for our customers.

What challenges did we face this quarter?

Contacting to customers to check they still require the services they are registered for has been challenging. We've tried to make contact via text message, letter and phone call with limited contacts or responses. This is an area of focus for the upcoming quarter to ensure we have customers registered for their requirements.

What do we have planned for next quarter?

We continue to review our Priority Services Register and make process improvements to ensure they meet customers needs. We continue to expand our reach with increased visibility of our Priority Services Register to customers via multiple channels. We're introducing email communication as a contact channel, as well as continuing our outbound communications and social media promotion. In addition, we continue to work across the industry to progress data sharing with energy companies to ensure our customers that need this service are appropriately identified and then supported.