Yorkshire Water has published its Annual Report and Financial Statements setting out its operational and financial performance for the year ended 31 March 2026.

The water company is making the biggest investment in its history – £8.3 billion between 2025 and 2030. The report says "this will take time given the scale of new infrastructure and complexity of the task."

During 2025-26 year Yorkshire Water says it has made progress with 23% of the 5-year AMP programme already on site being delivered, 88 projects completed and 89% of projects already in design stage, with over 1,500 projects either being designed, built or completed. 

Revenue during the period reached £1,639.8 million, up by 26.2%, driven by higher regulatory revenues as part of AMP8. Yorkshire Water invested £989.8 million over the year in its capital programmes to improve services across Yorkshire (2025: £889.8 million). The company’s Net Debt position increased to £7,585.7 million attributed to funding of its CAPEX programme and the impact of inflation on the debt portfolio.

Gearing was maintained at 72.8% (2025: 72.5%), with Yorkshire Water reporting stable credit ratings from ratings agencies Moody’s, Fitch and S&P. Regulatory gearing is forecast to reduce by around five percentage points by the end of AMP8. The company says it successfully raised £700 million of new debt finance in July 2025, “evidencing continued access to funding at acceptable market rates.”

The report also says its strong liquidity position was sustained, with available liquidity in the Yorkshire Water Financing Group of £1,282.2 million at 31 March 2026, sufficient to cover forecast cashflows until March 2028. However, the report acknowledges that Yorkshire Water remains an “Elevated Concern” within Ofwat’s latest ‘Monitoring Financial Resilience’ report.

Positive new shareholder developments highlighted in the report include the 42% stake taken by EQT in March 2026 to invest in Kelda Holdings, the parent company of Yorkshire Water. In February 2026 Yorkshire Water announced that two of the four shareholders in the parent company were selling their shares, and that E Q T were acquiring a 42% stake in the group as a result.

Through its Private Capital and Infrastructure strategies, EQT has invested more than £10 billion of equity in UK-headquartered businesses directly, with more capital deployed through portfolio companies to date. The global investment organization had EUR 270 billion in total assets under management (EUR 141 billion in fee-generating assets under management) as of 31 December 2025.

The report also says that Yorkshire Water is expecting that a remaining intercompany loan balance of over £600 million, including interest, will be repaid before the end of March 2027 to improve financial resilience and reduce gearing levels

Operational highlights 

Operational highlights flagged up in the report include:

• Capital plan is well underway with £990 million delivered to improve asset infrastructure over the year
• Delivery at scale with 23% of AMP8 five-year programme already on site being delivered; 1,500 projects being designed or built with 88 already completed
• Expanded team with recruitment and onboarding of more than 1,200 people
• Increased financial support providing £70 million for 246,000 customer bills (2025: £45 million for 167,000 customer bills)
• Added 80,000 customers on to the Priority Services Register to tailor the service they receive to better reflect their needs
• Improvement in Ofwat’s Customer Measure of Experience (C-MeX) but taking action to address disappointing fall to 12/17 in league table (2025: 10)

Environmental progress enabled by technology and infrastructure investment:

• c.175km of water mains replaced in 12 months exceeding target for the year and achieving more than twice the length of mains replaced in the whole of the previous five years
• Leakage down by 18.5% on a 2020 baseline (an improvement of 3.4% year on year) - expanded leakage team to reduce the time it takes to find and fix leaks.
• Storm overflow operation fell by 24.5% (on a calendar year basis) with average discharges per overflow reducing from 31 to 24
• Reduced external sewer flooding by 10.1%; started 26 different projects to replace sewers across the region, completing 3 in the last year
• Caused zero category 1 pollutions but despite increased monitoring, total pollution incidents rose above our target to 49.75 incidents per 10,000km of sewer;
• Pollution Incident Reduction Plan commenced to drive improvement and marked clear operational areas where improvement needed: water supply duration interruptions and internal sewer flooding incidents

Commenting on the EPA rating for 2025 which has been postponed by Environment Agency until October 2026, the report says:

"Unfortunately, we anticipate a reduction to 1* rating for three reasons – two related to pollution, where performance needs to improve and the third a historic issue related to not achieving the delivery of five improvement projects from our 2020-25 WINEP plans in west Leeds."

In 2026 the utility made significant investments across Yorkshire, completing 88 investment projects across the region and starting many more. 44 of those projects were to replace water mains across the region – totalling c.175km of pipework,. Yorkshire Water says this performance was supported by surpassing its targets on smart meter upgrades, focusing on pressure control valve installation, new technology and smart network installations to reduce water loss.

Other investments were to replace sewers, reduce discharges of untreated wastewater through increased storage and increased treatment capacity, reduce the amount of phosphorus entering local watercourses, improve reservoir safety, and starting the work to install new boreholes in Malton, Brayton and East Ness – key to providing a more resilient and reliable water supply.

Where company is focused on improving performance

Pollution: Yorkshire Water reported last year that it was taking significant steps to improve pollution performance. However progress this year has not been as ot had hoped, with more total pollution incidents than in the prior year, and the same number of serious incidents. Performance challenges were compounded by extreme weather conditions, including a prolonged period of drought and several named storms. The drought created significant issues for smaller wastewater treatment works, which typically serve rural communities of fewer than 250 people and often discharge into small watercourses. Reduced flows in these watercourses, which often become dry ditches during drought conditions, meant that even routine discharges had a greater environmental impact than usual because there is less rainwater to dilute the discharge. This resulted therefore in a greater number of pollution incidents.

One of the ways Yorkshire Water is seeking to reduce pollution is by improving data and understanding of its network - the company is continuing to increase use of operational intelligence, which uses data from  monitors and AI to predict and prevent pollution before it occurs.

Customer Service: The utility is continuing to focus on improving the experience customers have with it. However, the report says that with bills increasing in April 2025 by 30% on average, followed by hosepipe restrictions in July, customer sentiment dropped and impacted performance.

The company's plan is focussed on improving end-to-end ownership through each customer’s experience and increasing the number of colleagues in customer facing roles. Yorkshire Water has also introduced ‘second voice’ which provides customers with an additional escalation if they feel their interaction "has not been handled how they’d like it to have been."

The focus for this year is to build on tactical gains while transitioning towards sustainable, strategic solutions such as digital self-serve, automation, improved customer interactions, WhatsApp and interactive voice response enhancements, and end-to-end system transformation. 

.Nicola Shaw, CEO from Yorkshire Water said:

“Last year we stated a firm commitment to being transparent about how we’re performing, where we need to improve, and what we’re doing to deliver for our customers and the environment in Yorkshire – this Full Year results statement is an indication of how we are committed to communicating openly with our customers and stakeholders.

“Over the financial year 2026, we served 5.5m individual customers every day, in 2.4m homes and 146,000 businesses whilst dealing with drought conditions for six months of the period, followed by the wettest three months since 1871, which has been challenging to say the least. We had some clear successes – showing our work is making a real difference – and ended the year with a more resilient water network, thanks to the rapid investment we completed. At the same time, we delivered improved water quality, reductions in leakage and external sewer flooding, investment in new water supplies and an impressive water mains replacement programme. Nonetheless, there remains a huge amount of work to do to get to where we want to be.

“In response to this we are investing more than ever before with £8.3 billion of investment over the next five years. Many of the projects we are undertaking to improve services are multi-year projects, which take time to deliver, but we remain focused on meeting the expectations of our customers and other stakeholders. I am confident we have the right strategy and investment plans in place to keep delivering real benefits for our customers and the environment here in Yorkshire.”

Click here to download Yorkshire Water, Annual Report and Financial Statements year ended 31 March 2026