We make our water wonderful
So every time you pay your water bill, it covers much more than just the cost of cleaning the water you use and the wastewater we take away. It goes towards caring for our water and the environment we take it from.
Every day we provide around 2 billion litres of clean tap water and take away over 3 billion litres of wastewater. Behind the scenes we’re working hard 24 hours a day, on a network of pipes over 130,000km long, with thousands of pumping and treatment stations across your region.
And at the same time, we’re investing for the future, to make sure we can keep on doing all of this while protecting the places where we live.
So, what makes up that £1.20 per day?
Energy
We need to use energy to clean the water and pump it around our network so it’s there when you turn on the tap or flush the loo. Higher energy prices are affecting everyone at the moment and we’re doing what we can to protect you from these rising costs.
Did you know we're now generating over half of our energy ourselves, for example through converting sewage into bio-gas? In the years to come, we'd like to do more of this.
Return on investments
We share our success with shareholders and financial supporters. It’s how we’re able to keep investing in our water and region to benefit generations to come. In the last year, we invested almost four times more than we paid in dividends to shareholders.
Performance incentives
The way we’re regulated by Ofwat means there’s a ceiling on how much water companies are allowed to charge. We think this is fair as it protects customers from higher bills.
Like all water companies in England and Wales our regulators tell us how much we can charge and this will vary every year depending on our costs and recent performance. What you pay links to the service we deliver and Ofwat holds us to account against the promises that we make and can penalise us if we don’t deliver them.
So how does it all work? We talk to the regulator and customers to understand what is important for us to focus on. The size of the performance incentive is based on how much customers value the improvements we’ve made over the last five years.
Interest on borrowing
A lot of our projects - to improve our network and the environment around us – will be going on for many years. We need to borrow money to pay for this work as we can’t fund it all from customer bills.
Because we’re a successful business we’re able to borrow money at relatively low rates, reducing the impact on your bills.
Taxes, rates and licences
We’re a large, UK-based company and we think it’s right that we should pay to support our region and society in general. Some of the services we provide have VAT added by the Government. We also pay for licences to provide our services to you, for example to our regulators and to the Environment Agency to allow us to extract water from natural sources.
Building new assets
We want to make sure your water is there when you need it, and that we can safely deal with the waste from a growing population. This is what we spend in the year on new equipment to serve customers and protect the environment for the future.
At any time we’ll have dozens of projects on the go.
Maintaining our equipment
With enough pipes to go around the Earth over three times, it’s a big job to keep our existing network in shape. But that’s not all. With reservoirs, over a thousand treatment works, and pumping stations to look after too, it’s a 365-days-a-year task to keep everything ticking over for our customers.
People and materials
We believe in looking after the people who look after you. We’re a Real Living Wage employer with almost 8,000 “Severn Trenters” looking after everything, including managing our reservoirs, cleaning water or wastewater, fixing pipes and being there when you need us.
To do this we work alongside our expert suppliers to bring us all the materials we need. One example would be the chemicals we need to make your water safe.
Executive pay
You wanted to know just how much goes towards paying our leaders. We need to attract and keep the right people to manage a strong company.
Forecast average annual household combined water and sewage bills (£). Source: Water UK
Proud to still be one of the lowest bills in England
Our average household bill for water and sewerage in 2024/25 will be around £438 per year or £1.20 per day.*
But we understand that your bill could be a problem, and we want to help. You’re not alone and we’ve promised that we will help up to 700,000 customers with their bills by 2030.
We have a number of schemes available to help anyone worried about their bill.
So if you, or a loved one, needs a little extra support, please get in touch.
*Average daily combined (metered and unmeasured customers) cost for 2024/25 is £1.20.
How we improved our service to you
In 2023/24 we improved across a range of areas, helping us to provide a better service to you; 80% of service measures we report to Ofwat were rated green.
Over the next five years, we’re going to spend £12.9 billion on running our day-to-day business and making improvements for customers and the environment.
Delivering water that is good to drink and always there
You told us you were worried about water being lost through leaks. We listened.
Making our region’s rivers the healthiest they can be
You want your rivers and streams to be healthy. You’re right to think this way. We do too.
Being a positive difference in our communities
Extra ways we can help
If you need financial support with your bills or have other difficult circumstances, we have ways we can help.
Customer Promise
If anything ever impacts your water supply, we will let you know what is happening and what we are doing to fix it. We’ll keep you regularly updated, and if supplies are impacted over a longer period, we’ll also make alternative water supplies available to you.