South East Water has published its Annual Performance Report for 2014-15 outlining how it has performed on a range of measures to ensure customers are receiving a good level of service.

Highlights for the year include a substantial improvement in the way the firm deals with customer contacts and an investment of more than £96 million in projects to improve the water infrastructure - key successes during the year flagged up by the water company include:

• Meeting its leakage target for the 13th successive year
• Spending £27.4 million on the repair and replacement of water mains
• Investing £27 million in improvements at key water treatment works in Kent, Sussex and Berkshire to protect water quality
• Installing 49,000 water meters at a cost of £11.2 million as part of the Customer Metering Programme in line with the aim to meter 90 per cent of customers by 2020 - 70 per cent of SEW customers are now on a meter.
• Producing high quality drinking water, with 99.96% of all samples complying with UK Drinking Water Regulations
• The average time the supply of water was interrupted to properties was halved from 16 minutes to eight minutes.

During the year SEW invested £22.8 million in the development of new resources, mains and upgrading existing resources and £1.6 million to improve security at a number of its key water supply sites. Commenting on maintenance of existing assets and infrastructure, the report says the firm invested £27.4 million in below ground infrastructure, replacing over 49km of water mains and repairing burst mains. It also invested £29.9 million in above ground infrastructure on maintaining water treatment works, pumping stations, reservoirs, wells and boreholes.

Commenting on energy use, the report says the company is assessing the available renewable energy options on a regular basis and implementing renewable energy schemes - one of SEW’s largest and most changeable operating costs is its electricity bill which is more than £1 million every month. SEW is also actively seeking to reduce its carbon footprint via a range of carbon reduction schemes such as network optimisation.

The water company is aiming to reduce carbon emissions by one per cent each year. From 2015/16 SEW has decided to monitor performance based upon the level of carbon per customer per year on the basis that this measure provides a level of protection given the expected growth in population in the south east of England.

Gross operational emissions in the year were 81,166 tonnes of CO2 and performance per million litres of water delivered was 385 kgCO2e - an increase from the previous year. The increase is due to inclusion of national grid losses from the electricity transmission and distribution network for the first time, which has led to an increase in the UK carbon emission factors for the period.

The report also summarises South East Water’s £429 million of investment during AMP5 covering:

• £35 million on water quality and compliance schemes for ultrafiltration at nine sites and enhanced security at 21 sites
• £126 million through the installation of over 200,000 water meters and 203km of new mains and water resource schemes
• £142 million undertaking major refurbishments at 19 treatment works and a range of planned and reactive works on boreholes
• £126 million on renewing and replacing 232km of mains and over 136,000 renewal or repairs of communication pipes.

Commenting on the firm’s performance, Paul Butler, Managing Director of South East Water, said:

“Our activities during the year have continued to be driven by our ongoing commitment to improve our service to customers. We have made substantial improvements in how we handle customer contacts and have seen the level of customer complaints reduce by 45 per cent this year. This builds on the improvements we have made over the past few years.”

Click here to read the report in full