Southern Water says that its “short and sharp strategy” to boost performance by 2025 is showing continued signs of progress – just over a year since its launch.
In April 2023, the water company set out an ambitious Turnaround Plan which covers its key priorities to deliver a step-change in its performance over two years between 2023 and 2025.
This was enabled by an additional £550 million investment from Southern Water shareholders, which followed a £1.1 billion equity investment in 2021 – allowing the company to spend £3 billion between 2020 and 2025 (£1,500 per household) to improve its network.
The Turnaround Plan is focussed on securing quick improvements in producing a reliable supply of high quality water, protecting the environment, and providing excellent customer service, as well as a number of other areas. The utility’s Executive and Board review progress against it each month.
Southern Water said it is making “significant progress” in its May 2024 six-month update on the Turnaround Plan.
Over the past six months, improvement highlights include:
- putting in place a new risk calculator for planning and scheduling of maintenance at its sites as well as tactical fixes across 20 sites.
- cleaning service reservoir tanks –some of which were built by the Victorians – to make sure that they can be brought into supply whenever the company needs to manage demand, reducing the amount of time
- focus on reducing leakage by installing a further 3,000 listening devices and a new mapping
- system – with high-priority leaks now being repaired three times faster than in 2019
- a new Logistics team which has been improving access to critical spares and new water tankers – in operation 24/7 – to support teams running the networks and sites
- upgrading 35 key sites, thereby improving compliance with environmental permits by 89%.
- setting up a new team in Southern Water’s Control Centre which will analyse data 24/7, with support from AI, to help predict failures
- using data from 24,000 Sewer Level to plan routine maintenance and repair
- reduced the risk of 30 large sewer mains bursting by installing air release valves and pressure monitoring devices
- updated online spill notification service to include inland storm overflow releases, automating internal verification processes to speed up any updates.
However, the company acknowledges that there are also further improvements needed over the next 12 months to hit targets.
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