Our strategies and plans

Most of our customers agree that a water meter is the fairest way to charge a household or business for the water they use. But they want us to make sure that customers who struggle financially or who have a disability are protected from the possibility of having a higher bill as a result of having a meter.

There isn’t widespread support among customers for making meters compulsory for everyone, so we aren’t going to do this. Instead, we’re thinking about the best ways to encourage more customers to have a meter. We’re also thinking about how we can give our customers a smart meter device in their homes – something many said they would like to help them monitor and control how much water they use.

Most of our customers told us they were happy with the level of service they currently get from us. That means they would only expect us to have to introduce a hose pipe ban once every 40 years.

Business customers are also happy with our commitment to only have a temporary ban on non-essential activities (such as cleaning the windows) once every 80 years.

So, for now, we’re not going to make any changes to the level of service we offer our customers.

Our customers and other key stakeholders said they want us to do much more to reduce the amount of water that leaks out of our pipe network every day. They also told us that if we want them to use less water, then we have to lead the way and reduce leakage. So, we are making this area a central part of our business plan.

Most of our customers agree they could do more to reduce how much water they use. But more than half of them said we needed to do better at making them more aware of the support we can offer to help save water – such as free shower timers and leaky loo strips.

Customers also said they didn’t appreciate the ‘big picture’ reasons around why they need to use less water, such as climate change or population growth. So we are going to look at how we can better explain to every customer why we all need to work together to use less of one of our most precious resources – something that 95% of customers said was their view.

Many of our customers said they would prefer us to focus our efforts on reducing leakage and increasing the number of properties with a smart meter. Many also said they didn’t want us to drill new holes in the ground to take water and were against us building large new treatment works to meet the future demand for water.

As we have to run water treatment works to ensure the water is safe to drink, most of our customers said that we should have two smaller ones rather than one really large one. They thought that this was a safer option for making sure there was always enough clean water to drink.

Many customers have told us that it is important to them that we protect wildlife (plants and animals) in our region. A third of our customers said they don’t think we’re doing enough in this area. They also said that we could to do more to explain to them what impact our activities have on the areas they live in.