Repeated failures by South West Water to tackle leaks are putting customers at higher risks of losing water supplies as parts of the region remain in severe drought, regulators have said. In a warning to the privatised company that serves 1.8 million people across the south-west of England, the regulators said it had been failing to meet targets to reduce leaks and repair burst pipes for seven years. Given the ongoing drought conditions, these shortcomings are placing customers at a greater level of risk.
This is not acceptable,” said Ofwat, the Environment Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in a letter to the company. The letter emerged as the National Drought Group prepared to meet on Thursday, with about 82% of England still in drought, and severe drought declared in parts of Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Somerset, East Sussex and West Sussex. The Met Office has said 120% of typical rainfall is needed over seven months to bring the country fully out of drought.
South West Water leaks 113.5m litres of water a day from its pipes and infrastructure, the equivalent of 45 Olympic swimming pools. Leakage is 5.7m litres a day higher than last year and poses a risk to customer’s security of supply, the regulators’ letter says. The continued severe drought in many areas of the region affects about 325,000 people and thousands of businesses in Exeter and mid and east Devon.
They are at risk of having their supplies regularly cut off over the coming weeks and months, which could lead to school closures and economic losses. South West Water has written to households in those areas urging them to reduce their water usage to help secure supplies. The company does not acknowledge the contribution that the scale of its own leakage is making to the risk of outages.
In the joint letter to the company dated 26 October, the regulators and the government said: “Achieving your planned leakage reductions is reputationally important as you are asking customers to reduce their water use.” After the driest April to September in more than a century, fuelled by the climate crisis, reservoir levels in some sites are critically low. Storage at Wimbleball, which supplies South West Water customers in east Devon, north Devon, Somerset and west Dorset, and Wessex Water customers in west Somerset, is at 16%. There are also concerns for several smaller South West Water reservoirs serving homes in Devon and Cornwall.
The joint letter says the failure to tackle leakage has reduced confidence in the company to ensure supplies and avoid emergency abstraction from rivers that will cause environmental damage. The leader of Devon county council, Julian Brazil, said: “Householders and businesses have been told to save water to avoid worse drought restrictions and that it was all down to the dry weather. Now we learn South West Water has been continually warned for seven years it’s not doing its bit on leakage and they are still failing, which puts our rivers and wildlife at risk of prolonged environmental damage and may leave thousands of customers and businesses facing supply restrictions.
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