Willing to embrace innovation
Jun 23 2008 The Journal
NORTHUMBRIAN Water is pushing ahead with its long term plans – to be the national leader in water and waste water services. The County Durham-based company last year launched Looking To The Future, a document setting out the firm’s ambitions for the next 20 to 30 years.
Its ambitions are:
:: To meet customers’ expectations and deliver affordable services
:: Protect and enhance the environment
:: Take a sustainable approach to all its activities
:: Always be fair and responsible
:: Contribute to economic development in the region
:: Improve the quality of life of the communities the business serves
:: Attract and retain high calibre staff
:: Be a learning organisation, promoting and embracing innovation
Northumbrian Water will shortly submit its draft business plan to water regulator Ofwat.
This will set out its proposals for the five years from 2010 and will provide the platform for achieving the business’s long-term aspirations.
A final plan will be submitted in early in 2009 after consulting on draft proposals. On the basis of this final plan, Ofwat will then determine prices and services to be delivered for 2010-15.
Northumbrian Water is passionate about customer service. This hard work is clearly paying off with eight out of 10 household customers currently saying they have overall satisfaction with their service.
The water company's priorities are supplying excellent quality drinking water , ensuring continuity of supply, reducing internal sewage flooding and reducing sewage litter.
But cost remains a key issue with one in five customers not willing to pay more for services and almost two-thirds only prepared to pay up to £5 above inflation (to 2015).
So key challenges for the business include maintaining and, where appropriate, improving services while keeping bills affordable.
Maintaining healthy and stable finances to ensure the business can continue to borrow money to meet the investment needed in the business is also vital.
And dealing with climate change is at the top of the company’s agenda – with work continuing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and future proof operations against a changing climate.
But what about the longer term?
Looking To The Future has set some challenging long-term targets for customer satisfaction, water quality, availability of water, waste water services, sustainability, company finances and employees.
Key issues for Northumbrian Water’s future are:
Providing safe and clean drinking water
Northumbrian Water will continue to develop its approach to assessing and addressing risks to water quality from source to tap. Working with stakeholders it will encourage catchment-based solutions that protect water sources in preference to installing additional treatment to remove contaminants.
In some part of the region the company has received relatively high levels of complaints about discoloured water – usually caused when sediment is stirred up by fast flows in the pipe or when there is a mains burst. The company aims to remove this cause for complaint over time. It plans to address the Tyneside system by 2015 and identify an appropriate solution for Teesside.
It will also investigate any taste and odour complaints.
Meeting future water needs
In the North East, 99% of the population lives in areas where local resources can be supported by Kielder reservoir which fortunately means we have sufficient water for our customers’ needs.
Managing leakage, encouraging customers to use water wisely, offering optional meters free of charge and installing meters in new properties are all ways of preserving supplies.
Keeping the water flowing
Reducing unplanned interruptions to supplies from burst water mains and reducing planned interruptions are also on the long-term agenda.
The 2007 floods in the Midlands and Yorkshire have heightened awareness of the need to ensure key water company assets are resilient to flooding from rivers and surface water. Northumbrian Water has reviewed its key assets and found relatively few are at risk.
Dealing with increasing flows in the sewerage system
In recent years have brought increasingly heavy storms and, as a result of climate change, these are predicted to be more frequent in the future. Increasing areas of paving also add to the speed and volume of water running off into the sewer. Northumbrian Water has increased its investment in addressing sewer flooding and plan to increase it further in 2010-15. The long-term aspiration is that no customer has to face sewer flooding in their property.
Improving the water environment
Major investment by Northumbrian Water has brought significant improvements to the region’s rivers in the last two decades. They are among the best in the country with salmon and trout returning to many of them. It aims to help support further improvement and has been working closely with the Environment Agency to identify a programme under the Water Framework Directive.
The aims is to achieve 100% compliance with discharge consents at sewage works by 2015.
Plans include increasing biodiversity on their land holdings and encouraging others to follow their lead. There will also be an increase level
of maintenance investment in the future.
Dealing with climate change
Northumbrian Water aims to move as far towards carbon neutrality as possible and by 2015, it will have increased its use of renewable energy to over 20%.
Prospects for bills
Proposals for investment during the five years from 2010 will be at levels broadly similar to the current period.
But the company believes it should be possible to avoid prices rising significantly above inflation.
:: To have your say on the plans contact Northumbrian Water at Abbey Road, Pity Me, Durham, DH1 5FJ or log on to www.nwl.co.uk
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