Our performance

What’s gone well during 2024?
Water Quality Compliance (CRI) is reported over a calendar year. The final result is not normally confirmed until June. However, our draft calculation for CRI in 2024 is a value of 3.87. This is a significant improvement from 9.2 units in 2023. The key area of improvement has been a series of targeted interventions at a previously high risk water treatment works in the Bradford area. We're pleased to confirm there were no failed samples in 2024 at this high risk site.

What challenges have we faced during 2024?
Although the CRI measure can be variable year to year, the underlying drivers of performance are related to long term activity. We'll continue to optimise processes at our water treatment works to prevent presence of bacteria. In addition, in 2025 we'll be completing several water treatment works upgrades which will reduce the risk of contaminants, tastes or odours in water supplied to customers.

What activities are planned for 2025?
The 2025 is the start of a new 5-year delivery period (AMP8), and will see the start of ambitious new plans to address historic sediments in large trunk mains and in local distribution. We'll be looking to improve the quality of water supplied to customers by target flushing and an increased programme of mains replacement.

What’s gone well during Oct-Dec 2024?
Although there were challenges throughout this quarter, our underlying performance has remained stable, which is pleasing to see. 

What challenges have we faced during Oct-Dec 2024?
A large event, due to a power failure at our water treatment works in Doncaster, led to over 17,500 properties going without water for over 3 hours. 

What activities are planned for Jan-Mar 2025?
Investigations continue as part of our large mains renewal programme starting in April. This programme will reduce the number of bursts on our network and reduce the likelihood of customers supplies being interrupted.

What’s gone well during Oct-Dec 2024?
Performance was solid in the first part of this quarter, holding leakage steady in anticipation of the challenging winter months. This allowed us proactively identify leaks, finding and fixing leaks which are not yet impacting our customers.

What challenges have we faced during Oct-Dec 2024?
We saw an increase in burst leaks due to the cold weather towards the end of November. The freeze thaw temperatures impact the water network resulting in more leaks. We saw an almost 30Ml/d increase in leakage over 3 days. This increase is earlier in the year than we anticipated and recovery was slightly slower than we would have liked. 

What activities are planned for for Jan-Mar 2025?
Winter is our busiest time in Leakage. We respond to thousands of burst leaks on our water network. Sustained sub-zero temperatures followed by warm weather will result in many leaks. Our plan is always to respond quickly, finding and fixing leaks swiftly to ensure no risk of loss of supply to our customers. 

Our smart meter deployment begins in earnest in January 2025. Smart meters allow us to react to leaks on customer’s supply pipes much quicker than traditional means. This will help us identify any leakage at customer properties quicker, so we can reduce overall leakage. We're also busy making plans for the new AMP. We're looking at how we can do things differently to make a step change in leakage performance. This will include some future opportunities to join our leakage team. 

What’s gone well during Oct-Dec 2024?
We've seen a number of our sites achieve their Unplanned Outage target which is really pleasing to see. We also have investment going ahead to resolve some longer term issues and we're expecting to deliver some positive results on performance moving forwards.

What challenges have we faced during Oct-Dec 2024?
A challenge we've faced this year, which we haven't experienced before, is accessing some critical parts quick enough to be able to rectify an outage issue. We're working with our suppliers to ensure this challenge doesn't continue.

What activities are planned for for Jan-Mar 2025?
Continued focus with key team internally to maintain and protect performance. We'll also carry out a review of the longer and larger impacting sites to see what we can do proactively to improve levels of performance.

What's gone well during Oct-Dec 2024?
Performance against mains repairs is running close to the set target and we're doing everything we can to still achieve plan. Our field team continue to identify any weak spots in our network to prevent mains repairs.

What challenges have we faced during Oct-Dec 2024?
The two week cold snap during the quarter and subsequent thaw has causes a significant breakout in the number of bursts/leaks from mains.

What activities are planned for Jan-Mar 2025?
The plan for the next quarter is to protect performance as much as possible as we progress through the challenging cold months of January and February. We prioritise mains repairs and the the highest volume leaks to ensure customer supply interruption is kept to a minimum and ensure we recover from any leakage outbreak as quickly as possible.

What’s gone well during Oct-Dec 2024?
A successful flow regulator trial took place in Leeds. The demand reduction per household mirrored the demand reduction we included in our Water Resource Management Plan and PR24 submissions. This ensures we're capturing accurate and reliable data.

What challenges have we faced during Oct-Dec 2024?
Consumption is higher than forecast in the half-year water balance which is a risk to our end of year outturn for PCC. This also has ramifications for our starting point at the commencement of the new AMP from April 2025.

Our water efficiency home audit program is still ongoing, but the uptake for this initiative has remained low. We're reviewing ways to improve this in the next AMP.

What activities are planned for Jan-Mar 2025?
The next quarter is focused on finalising the remaining trials in year 5 of AMP7 and business readiness for our next AMP to ensure we're able to deliver our household water efficiency program of initiatives.

What’s gone well during 2024?
As we wrap up 2024, we've seen a positive impact from the various pollution initiatives we've implemented. This has led to improved self-reporting of incidents and a positive impact on overall pollution, particularly across our sewer networks where we have introduced new working methods.

We've also continued to strengthen our collaborative efforts with Rivers Trusts and other community groups, by launching our River Watch App. This will allow us to work closely with these groups to monitor Yorkshire’s watercourses for the benefit of the environment.

What challenges have we faced during 2024? 
Storm events throughout 2024 have posed significant challenges for pollution control. We've worked tirelessly across the business to ensure swift responses and remediation efforts. The regulatory changes and the new government have brought numerous changes to the water industry. This evolving landscape has required us to adapt and respond to the challenges of improving the environment. We continue to collaborate closely with our regulators to ensure we strike the right balance for improvements and achieve a consistent approach across the country. 

What activities are planned for 2025? 
As we approach the end of the current AMP, we're excited about the opportunities in our next five-year cycle. We have ambitious plans to improve the environment sustainably and we'll share more details throughout 2025.

From a high-level perspective, between 2025 and 2030, Yorkshire Water aims to achieve a 32% reduction in storm overflows and a 75% reduction in harmful nutrients in rivers. We'll be investing £1.5 billion in reducing storm overflows and an additional £98 million in installing water quality monitors in Yorkshire’s rivers.

What’s gone well during Oct-Dec 2024?
We've continued to perform better than last year for year-to-date internal sewer flooding incidents and we've consistently been ahead of target for some of our proactive initiatives.

Our Sewer Maintenance Programme focuses on hotspot areas for sewer flooding. We've completed 48,448 property surveys, found and cleared 1,820 blockages and identified defects proactively. We've exceeded all targets set for this programme.

We continue to see positive engagement with our blockages campaign to raise customer awareness and engagement on not flushing unsuitable items. We're seeing lower levels of soft blockages in relation to internal sewer flooding. The Network Protection Team continue to educate and support our customers alongside our blockages campaign to reduce the impact unsuitable items in the network. They've been providing advice and expertise to businesses on how to manage what they introduce into the network to avoid blockages, supporting our drive to reduce sewer flooding incidents.

What challenges have we faced during Oct-Dec 2024?
Unfortunately, while we are performing better than last year, we've had some challenging weather conditions with several named storms. This has contributed to our current internal sewer flooding performance being adverse to plan for our regulatory target. We're continuing to drive our proactive and preventative work as well as our response times to customer issues.

What activities are planned for for Jan-Mar 2025?
Internal sewer flooding is a key priority for both Yorkshire Water and our customers. We're working hard to remove the risk of sewer flooding and improve our performance. We'll continue to drive our proactive programmes and preventative measures as well as improve our response times for our customers. We'll continue to educate our customers on network abuse through our Network Protection Team as well as promoting our blockages campaign. We're continually advancing our proactive initiatives to identify and address network risks before they impact performance, thereby preventing potential issues for our customers.

What’s gone well during 2024?  
2024 out-turned with a Treatment Works Compliance of 98.4%. This scores amber on the EPA metric. This isn't the level of performance we hoped for and we're determined to see increased performance levels in 2025 and beyond. 

What challenges have we faced during 2024?
In total, there were 5 sewage treatment works which failed their compliance limits throughout the year. We'll take learnings from these to ensure similar failings don't repeat themselves. Much more information on these failings will be presented within our Annual Performance Report, due to be published by the 15th July 2025. 

What activities are planned for 2025?
We have a commitment to roll out continuous monitors throughout the next AMP. This will give us real-time data to help drive treatment works compliance improvements. We expect to see the start of this roll out in year 1 of AMP8.

What’s gone well during Oct-Dec 2024?
Our performance this quarter is still showing a steady and continued improvement from last year with 227 collapses against a target of 461 for 2024/2025, compared to 434 collapses against a target of 463 for the same time period in 2023/2024.  

What challenges have we faces during Oct-Dec 2024?
We've faced some challenges in the last two quarters, with bad weather and a large tech change for our field teams. It’s more important than ever we remain focused on our challenging targets to stay in the good position we're in now for the rest of the financial year.

What activities are planned for Jan-Mar 2025?
Understanding the health and performance of our network is our key focus and we'll continue to work hard to understand all of the factors that contribute to collapses on our network. We're committed to sharing all our findings with our colleagues in the Sewer Flooding and Pollution Teams and feed our learnings into our communications with customers, through our Network Protection Team and our blockage campaigns.

What’s gone well during Oct-Dec 2024?
During this quarter, we've continued to grow the number of customers registered for our Priority Service Register (PSR) slightly above our forecast. We've expanded our data sharing arrangement with the energy sector successfully sharing with energy suppliers as well as network operators during the quarter. Communications to customers to ensure they are registered for the services they would like has also been successful this quarter with over 40,000 communications to customers being sent. 

What challenges have we faced during Oct-Dec 2024?
Although we're surpassing our target for attempted contacts to customers still need these services, there have been challenges in reaching the number of customers to meet our 35% performance commitment target. This process is embedded as part of inbound customer contacts, as well as outbound communication across multiple channels (including letter, SMS, email and phone calls), but levels of customer engagement remain lower than we hoped. 

What activities are planned for for Jan-Mar 2025?
We continue to expand our customer reach for PSR with increased visibility of our services to customers via multiple channels, which also includes our annual billing communications during this quarter. We'll continue to have robust data sharing with the energy sector this quarter to ensure we are including customers who may need our extra help without the need for additional applications. We also continue to communicate with customers across all channels to check they are receiving the priority services they need. We forecast to send over 30,000 of the communications to customers during this quarter.