The effective management of leakage is a vital component in our progress towards becoming world class and in sustaining our reputation as a responsible custodian of essential resources. It is also a measure by which many of our stakeholders judge us.
At January 2009, there was a serious risk that we were likely to miss our 2008/09 leakage target. This was due to a number of difficulties encountered during 2008/09, including the introduction of a new process for dealing with leakage calls and the coldest winter for more than a decade.
A twelve week integrated promotional campaign was developed to encourage the public and employees to report leaks which would help us towards reaching our leakage targets. The campaign was focused in the main urban centre of Manchester and Liverpool.
The key messages were:
- Report leaks by calling Leakline or completing our on-line form
- Help to look after the environment by reporting leaks which waste water
- We will do our bit by quickly fixing the leaks that are reported
Our above the line promotions included 30-second advertisements over two weeks on Smooth and Century FM, advertisements in the Manchester Evening News and Liverpool Echo and a series of bus back posters. Below the line activity focused around main billing when more than 140,000 customers in Liverpool and Manchester - the areas identified with a good population density and high volumes of leaks - were sent specially designed leaflets in with their bills.
We also developed an internal campaign to encourage our employees to report leaks.
During January to March 2009, the campaign generated over 500 leak reports through our new form on the website and calls coming into our Leakline were maintained at high levels for the time of year.
This year we achieved Ofwat’s 12-month rolling leakage target of 465 megalitres per day for 2008/09.
Despite the coldest winter for years, in the first three months of the year we managed to cut leakage by 81 million litres per day. This was the biggest quarterly fall in leakage since 2000/01.
This result was achieved through the focus from our water operations teams and partners with improved speed of response to fix leaks, combined with the integrated customer and employee campaigns which raised awareness on how to report leaks.
The success of this campaign has meant that we plan a similar six-month programme from September 2009.