Going further and faster
We’re going to go further and faster to ensure the protection of our region’s rivers, providing corridors for wildlife to thrive, and ensuring a secure water supply for all our customers – both now and in the future.
This is why we continue to invest heavily. We’re spending record sums on improving and expanding our infrastructure and reducing our abstractions to leave more water in the environment for dry or low flow periods. We’re also funding valuable partnerships to keep our rivers healthy and allow biodiversity to thrive.
Protecting river health and caring for the environment is one of our top priorities. We’re the only water company to be recognised by the Environment Agency for four consecutive years with the highest four-star rating for environment – and we’re confident that we’ll get this recognition for a fifth consecutive year in 2024.
We’ve been investing to secure our water supply
If you're a Severn Trent customer, you enjoy water from a broadly equal balance of ground water sources (boreholes), river sources and reservoirs. This means your supply is resilient, particularly against drought.
Each region is unique, and what might be the right solution in one place might not be right for another. In the Midlands we haven’t needed to build a reservoir in the last 30 years because it’s not the right solution for future-proofing water supply for the customers and communities that we serve.
Instead, we’ve invested in the solutions that we know best suit our region, to secure customers’ supplies, such as increasing storage at reservoirs and water treatment works. We’ve also worked on innovative new projects such as two new strategic pipeline connections across the region.
Other projects, such as new licence trades and using ex-energy industry assets like Rugeley Power Station, providing enough additional water to supply a city the size of Derby.
Doing this sustainably, and in ways that protect river health, is our top priority. Over the last 30 years, we have invested heavily and consistently in the future water supply – investing £11.8bn in our water network, and £12.3bn in our waste network.
And we want to do more
But we’re not going to rest on our laurels. We’re already asking what more we can do.
As we look to the future, we’ve committed to invest record amounts over the next five years. If our plans are approved by the regulator, we’ll be investing £12.9bn, allowing us to go even further and faster to improve river health and protect future water supplies for all our customers.
Our investments won’t stop there. We’ll also be looking to maintain and upgrade the water network, bringing down leakage faster than ever before. We’ll work with our customers to help them use less, installing 1 million smart meters to support that goal.
Investment, combined with our day-to-day management of our water, means that we’ve not had to put a hosepipe ban in place anywhere in our area for 30 years. Almost no other English region can point to a track record like ours.
Our promise to protect rivers
But we understand that a priority for many of our customers is the health of the region’s rivers. We’ve promised that our operations will not be the reason for rivers not achieving good ecological status. Right now, we believe Severn Trent operations currently account for 14% of reasons why rivers in our operational area aren’t achieving good ecological status - with 86% now attributable to other sectors.
But we know we need to do more. We are working hard and investing record amounts to ensure that by this time next year, we’ll be responsible for 10% with that number rapidly decreasing each year, we will address 99% of those attributed to us by 2030.
This is why we’ve increased and accelerated investment behind our storm overflow spill reduction plan – increasing our investment to £450m as part of an industry-leading plan to deliver storm overflow solutions across 900 of our Midland based sites this year. Our 300-strong team are now installing c.1,000 capital schemes which will see spills reduced by 20% this year.
We’re abstracting less water from our rivers
Healthy rivers need consistent and plentiful flows of water to function as habitats for plants and animals, and to support the communities around them. This is why all of our abstractions are licenced by the Environment Agency to ensure they reflect sustainable environmental limits and protect river flows and the water environment.
Today, we are abstracting less water than ever before, and we don’t ever over-abstract. We abstract, clean and put into supply, on average, around 1,920 Ml/d (megalitres per day).
In the last five years, we’ve ceased using licences for some boreholes, and we expect to be handing back more abstraction licences over the next five years as our investment plans mean we won’t need them.
And in the last five years we have taken measures to protect the water environment to mitigate the impacts of any abstractions. This work includes creating multiple low flow alleviation schemes across the region.
We have also invested in catchment restoration and habitat protection schemes to improve ecological resilience to low flow conditions. We are taking all the steps necessary to ensure we maintain good river ecology that supports fish and other wildlife.
We’re reducing leakage
We know that reducing leakage will impact abstraction, which is why we’re delighted that we’ve hit our leakage targets, set by the regulator Ofwat, nine years out of the last 10.
We are constantly improving our network, and last year alone we saved 35million litres of water per day by fixing leaks across the network – a record year for us. Over the last 12 months we’ve seen a further 2million litres saved each day from customers changing their behaviour.
One million smart meters across the region will make it easier to find leaks and for customers to monitor their water usage. And, if they switch to a measured bill, they could potentially save money too.
Our plans for the future
Since 2005, we’ve reduced leakage by 29% and consumption by 4%, despite the population increasing by 22%.
As a water company, it’s a statutory requirement for us to produce and publish a Water Resource Management Plan (WRMP) every five years to demonstrate that we have long-term plans to address the impacts of population growth, as well as drought, environmental legislation and climate change uncertainty.
The aim is to maintain a broadly stable balance in the face of all of these changes.
Our latest plan – dWRMP24, saw us engage with more than 20,000 customers over the course of two years and incorporate comments from nearly 400 organisations. We’ve submitted our plan to Ofwat, who are currently considering it.
Working with farmers to care for our rivers
We know that caring for our region’s rivers is a team effort, which is why we’re working with a wide range of organisations and groups across our region.
As part of our partnership work, we’re working with farmers to find ways to tackle pollution from agricultural run-off. Our unique collaboration with the agricultural community has seen us support over 5,000 farmers across our region in the last decade through a range of schemes.
By working in partnership, offering advice, support and funding through our Severn Trent Environmental Protection Scheme (STEPS) we have helped farmers make changes on-farm to reduce the amount of pesticides, nitrates and cryptosporidium from reaching rivers, protecting water quality and biodiversity.
We believe that by working with others in our local communities, continuing to invest heavily in our network, and adopting new and innovative solutions, we can ensure a secure water supply for our customers, while helping make our region’s rivers the healthiest they can be.
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