How we're reducing leakage in Yorkshire

leak detection business Following an extremely challenging winter and dry spring, our promise to customers to further improve the resilience of our pipes to cope with the extremes is being put into action with a £101 million investment programme.

The investment will see us taking steps to improve the robustness of our pipe network and reduce leakage. By lowering the average age of the water pipe network in key areas, using sophisticated technology to control water pressure and water flow and inspecting 32,000 km's of water pipes we'll cut the number of leaks and bursts significantly.

It is important that we improve our leakage levels and the £101 million investment programme will see us taking pro-active steps towards this goal.

Richard Flint, Chief Executive, Yorkshire Water

What we're doing to tackle leakage

We're investing £101 million to help us find and fix bursts quicker as well as improve our water pipes to make them more resilient to leaks.
We've recruited significantly to strengthen our leakage teams who are out there finding and fixing leaks and bursts.
We've identified 24 areas in Leeds for investment that will look to reduce the amount of leakage, reduce the risk of future bursts, control water pressure, protect our network of water pipes and reduce customer issues. Leeds was chosen due to the age of the pipe network and the number of burst we've had in this area.
We're going to closely monitor and control water pressures by fitting pressure logger devices. This will help us save water, reduce the risks of bursts and leaks occuring.
We're trialling a new piece of technology in South Yorkshire which will allow us to control water pressure based on demand. We're hoping this will help us reduce leakage by 15% and also drastically help reduce the amount of energy we use to produce and supply water to our customers.
A key component of improving leakage is making it easier for customers to report leaks. We're looking at using GPS technology, which will enable us to react faster to reports.
Over the next 7 years we're upgrading all of Yorkshire with Automated Meters. As well as enabling us to read your meter without disturbing you the meters are fitted with leakage detectors so we'll be able to spot and fix any potential leaks quicker.
We're also looking at ways to tackle the problem longer term including investing in a state of the art IT system which will help us to improve the way we collect and analyse leakage information and provide real-time updates to our control centre. We also have a number of leading edge technologies that help us identify and fix leaks as quickly as possible.