Mid Kent Water top of leakage reduction league tables

The UK Office of Water Services (Ofwat) has announced that water leakage levels continue to fall. Mid Kent Water has reduced leakage by 16% in the past year. Meanwhile, Bournemouth & West Hampshire Water is the only company to have failed to meet its leakage reduction targets.


“We realised that we had to take more drastic measures to deal with the leakage problem,” a Mid Kent Water spokesperson told edie. “For instance, we have a major refurbishment in Whitstable going on. It’s a very disruptive project, with road closures, but in Whitstable the pipes are a century old.”

Mid Kent Water is the largest water supplier in Kent and counts its 16% leakage reduction as the equivalent to saving more than 10 litres a day by every customer. The company believes that “a continued high level of investment will be necessary in order to meet the future needs of both current, new domestic and business customers in our area”.

Releasing the 1998-1999 figures, Ofwat also praised Thames Water, Anglian Water and Severn Trent for important leakage reductions.

The only company to fail to meet Ofwat’s leakage reduction target was Bournemouth & West Hampshire Water (BWH). As a result, the company will be required to report to the regulator on a quarterly basis to ensure that the next target, for 1999-2000, is met. BWH provides drinking water to approximately 500,000 people in Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire.

According to Ofwat, careful monitoring of data is undertaken to ensure that companies do not overstate per capita consumption in order to improve leakage reduction rates. BWH failed to meet its target for 1998-1999 “following problems with its data”.

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