Non water service performance
We have contracts to operate a growing number of other utility companies’ assets on their behalf. Achieving high levels of customer service on behalf of our clients is important to us and we have a range of customer service measures in place in these contracts.
In our gas business, where we operate the network for our client, Northern Gas Networks, one of our key contract measures is to deliver our client’s regulatory Licence to Operate conditions regarding emergency response times for gas escapes. Uncontrolled escapes must be responded to within an hour and controlled escapes (where the emergency control valve has been shut) within two hours. Aggregated performance for these was 98%, an improvement on 2007/08’s level of 96%, against on ongoing target of 97%.
We operate and maintain the electricity network for Electricity North West. The key performance measures on service delivery are interruptions and minutes lost. The number of interruptions per 100 connected customers improved last year to 48.26 from 49.35 in 2007/08. The regulatory target is 57.1. The out-performance of the target and continual improvement is a result of the strong customer service focus and investment in the network.
For the measure of customer minutes lost (the number of minutes of power lost per connected customer per year) we achieved a performance of 50.58 (compared to a 2007/08 performance of 46.42). The regulatory target is 54.70. This represents an out-performance against our target but a reduction in performance from last year. The main reason for this is a change in the types of faults we experienced this year. Faults differ in how straightforward they are to detect and fix depending on which voltage network they occur on and whether they are on the underground or overhead network.
The ‘Power in the Hour’ initiative we started in the past year is aimed at improving our customer minute lost performance through setting a target of restoring power to all customers in less than an hour who can be switched back on without undertaking a repair. Extensive use is now made of vehicle trackers to ensure that the closest team, with the right skills, can be quickly identified and dispatched to the fault.