Water service performance
Customer satisfaction and service performance are closely linked. Our performance is monitored by our regulator against a number of key performance indicators, including the number of properties with low water pressure and the number of unplanned supply interruptions.
Our performance at reducing the number of properties receiving low pressure has continued to improve. We have reduced the number of properties which consistently receive low pressure from 509 to 272 during 2008/09, against an aim of 850. This equates to only 0.0085% of the properties connected to our water supply network.
There are several ways in which low pressure can be resolved including specifically targeted capital investment, investment in the network as a whole resulting in pressure improvements and operational changes to the network, targeted at reducing low pressure.
We estimate that 333,657 properties have received low pressure during the report year due to one-off incidents such as bursts or equipment failures, and these are not included in the regulatory definition of properties receiving low pressure.
We have also improved performance in the area of unplanned supply interruptions, where we measure performance in terms of interruptions lasting more than six hours, more than 12 and more than 24 hours. In 2008/09 we cut the proportion of properties suffering interruptions in one or more of these categories by half, down to 0.55% compared to 1.1% in 2007/08.