Bristol Water performance in 2018/19

There has been an improving trend in our biodiversity since we created this measure in 2014-15. This increase in the Biodiversity Index score demonstrates how Bristol Water is delivering habitat improvements and enhancements on company land holdings. The habitat value of our sites has been improved by projects and delivered in partnership with Bristol Water and different conservation organisations. The areas of work that have improved this year include:

• Chew Stoke Pumping Station, River Restoration: a significant change to this site is the relocation of the compensation flow (water outfall) upstream to re-wet a previously silted section of river. This new flow in combination with in-stream work to improve water quality has returned a river habitat, ready for recolonization of plants and animals.
• Urbanbuzz and Bristol Waters pollinator banks: Working in partnership with the national conservation charity Buglife, Bristol Water is changing the way it manages some of its covered reservoir grasslands. By planting additional native wildflowers and wild grasses, and changing the grass cutting routine to twice a year will enable grasses and flowers to grow. This vital food source is being provided for our urban pollinators with the vision that the populations of bees and butterflies will increase across the city of Bristol.

There have been two significant weather events that have impacted the number of reported bursts. Following the cold spell in March 2018 there was a large number of burst mains which were detected and repaired over the first three months of the reporting year. This was then followed by the hot dry summer resulting in higher water demands and ground movement which caused a large number of bursts to occur. We are undertaking more proactive mains replacements in 2019/20.

Our Water Quality team collects samples 365 days a year from across our 2,400 square kilometre supply area to ensure we comply with the sampling regime, with no exemptions applicable for example for weather conditions. The sampling schedule is aligned to a sophisticated computer-controlled programme so that water quality is checked right from source to customers' taps. Although the target of 100% for Mean Zonal Compliance (MZC) has not been achieved this year, our performance at 99.99% reflects the highest level of compliance we have achieved in the past five years, is still likely to be a leading level of performance when compared across the industry and is representative of the high quality of water supplied to our customers.

Our performance over the year has been divided; the first six months (from April to September 2018) saw poorer performance due to increased contacts in relation to poor pressure caused by excess demand in the long hot summer. The second half of the year has, encouragingly, seen a significant reduction in written complaints. This has been as a result of extra focus, training and ways of working to understand the causes of dissatisfaction. A key campaign ‘in their shoes’ has begun to encourage all staff to consider the customers’ expectations and end every interaction asking the customer for feedback. In addition, we continue to invest in wider transformation and new technology as part of our drive towards our long term vision for being the number one company for customer service.

The insight we gain from this survey tells us that customers rate their satisfaction on the whole, experience rather than just the phone call. Therefore to succeed in this measure we need to improve all aspects of the customer journey for our customers contacting us via the phone to our operational contact centre. We have as a result implemented a number of changes this year to help improve the customer experience, including customer journey mapping, additional resource to create a customer care team, the increase use of real time feedback and the launch of our company values. As we move into 2019/20 we have a number of projects underway to improve answering our customer’s enquiries right first time, these projects focus on training, IT improvements and ways of working.

Unplanned events mean potential interruptions to the treatment and supply of clean and wholesale water. We use the information from the work orders to better understand our assets and help to implement appropriate measures to ensure reliability.  Effective maintenance and management of assets using such information allows us to run our plant in a resilient manner; the more we can reduce the occurrence of unplanned events on our treatment works the more reliable the supply of water. The more we can reduce the occurrence of unplanned events on our treatment works the more reliable the supply of water and we have again outperformed in this area.

We managed our water resources very carefully during 2018/19, reducing the amount of water we took from the Mendip reservoirs and increasing the amount taken from the River Severn. This resilience allowed us to maintain a low risk of water restrictions, despite very dry and hot summer weather that was experienced. As a result, for the fourth consecutive year, we have reported a hosepipe ban risk frequency that is better than our target. It has been 29 years since we last introduced a hosepipe ban (in 1990).

Our leakage levels were exceptionally high when the reporting year began, due to the increased bursts associated with the ‘beast from the east’ extreme freeze-thaw weather in late February and early March 2018. No sooner had we started to reduced leakage than a long, hot and dry summer started. This resulted in stress on our network due to higher demand for water from our customers and ground movement around our pipes, ultimately leafing to higher than normal numbers of burst mains and leaks. In response to the events of the summer and our performance in 2017/18 a new leakage strategy was developed; we introduced additional leakage inspectors and prioritised the largest leak repairs to ensure these were fixed more quickly. As a result of this new strategy we are now detecting and fixing twice the number of leaks compared to last year.

During 2017/18 we agreed with Ofwat a number of changes to how we report on our performance, including on leakage. Without taking into account technical changes, our leakage performance is 45.8 Ml/day. As this is a higher number than the actual leakage level, we have committed to calculating financial incentives (which reduce customer bills) on this measure of leakage.

Our performance throughout the year has resulted in a lower than anticipated level of meter penetration, principally due to change of occupancy of properties occurring less than expected and requests for meter optants being less than forecast. Our performance partly arises due to a slower housing market and meter option requests, which means we have more work to do in meter promotion, which we have planned to catch up over 2019 and 2020.

We continue to innovate and introduce targeted metering initiatives, such as our ‘Beat the Bill’ campaign, which started in October 2017, with the aim to help customers reduce the amount of water they use. Since its launch, customers have saved as much as £100 a year and it has helped us find several leaks on customers’ supply pipes. We have run various marketing campaigns through a variety of media channels, such as promoting the benefits of metering via Twitter, Facebook, on our website, in information included on customer bills and on local radio.

Identifying new properties at risk of low pressure can arise as a consequence of our proactive monitoring of our network or as a consequence of poor pressure complaints raised by customers. We have undertaken remedial work to improve the water pressure available at three locations. This includes properties at Kingswood (via targeted mains renewal), at Glastonbury (by increasing pressure properties on a shared supply following customer complaints) and at Frome (by actively addressing properties that have historically received poor pressure, by increasing pressure available on a shared supply).

Our performance indicates that we have established a good level of customer experience and understanding of why our customers are contacting us. This has been achieved by updates to the website, improving the online self-service options, a review and update of the metered bill and continuous improvement in response to customer feedback.

Although the overall number of customer contacts about water quality has however increased compared to last year, we are pleased that we have outperformed against our target for this year. This increase is associated with an increased activity on the mains network due to the following:

• Contacts about the appearance of the water are commonly associated with the suspension of iron particles in water mains due to a change in flow or pressure i.e. a disturbance of the water main. During 2018 activity on the network has increased, with the ‘Beast form the East;’ causing a significant increase in bursts requiring repair. Put simply, contacts about water quality are to be expected when bursts occur, as the re-routing of water, to ensure a continuous supply of water to our customers, can have a short-term impact on the appearance of the water that comes out of your tap; and
• Our increased activities in reducing leakage, which had a similar effect to the approach to fixing bursts.

We have again met our target; this measure ensures that we monitor our performance in helping those customers on the lowest incomes and experiencing the most serious financial difficulties by calculating and tracking the percentage of customers in ‘water poverty’.

We offer three discounted tariffs to make sure we help customers who find it hard to pay their water charges, with 15,620 customers receiving assistance through these measures, an increase of 14% over last year:

• 6,483 households are on our ‘Assist’ social tariff, which offers significant bill discounts to those customers least able to afford their bill, following a means assessment.
• 2,826 households are on our WaterSure Plus metered tariff, this is for customers in receipt of certain benefits, and are defined by the government as ‘vulnerable’, either because they have a medical condition or a large family.
• 6,311 customers are on our Pension Credit social tariff. This scheme gives a 20% discount on water bills to customers who live in a household where all members over the age of 18 are in receipt of Pension Credit.

We know from continuous engagement activities that our customers on the whole do not wish to see full compulsory metering introduced and we do not have plans to introduce such a programme. This does impact PCC performance. In order to improve on our performance, our household customers receive a seasonal newsletter called Watertalk that offers advice to help reduce water consumption as well as money saving tips. In addition, we also have water saving kits available on request. We have also installed free water fountains in the centre of Bristol and offered a ‘water bar’ at local festivals and events, to help promote the benefits of water. We do also offer a range of free water saving products that could help our customers maximise the money they can save.

During 2017/18 we agreed with Ofwat a number of changes to how we report on our performance, including on per capita consumption. Without taking into account technical changes, our per capita consumption performance is 148.5 litres per person per day.

The successful delivery of the Southern Resilience Scheme in March 2018 (a £27m water infrastructure project) has significantly reduced the number of consumers at risk from 288,589 to 9,063 across our supply area including Weston-Super- Mare, Cheddar, Burnham-on-Sea and Glastonbury and the northern part of Bristol. The scheme involved constructing 30 kilometres of new mains to reinforce and support our southern supply area. The scheme means that if there is an emergency we can get our customers’ water supply back much, much quicker.

Our catchment management work has resulted in a reduction of algal bloom frequency and reflects a consistent reduction over the last four year. This means that water in our reservoirs will not be as expensive to treat as would have been the case had algal bloom frequency continued to increase as it did between 2010 to 2015. It also means that the ecological condition of the sites will have improved than would have been the case had the algae been allowed to continue to proliferate – this is important as the reservoirs are nationally, and in the case of Chew Valley Reservoir, internationally, designated habitats (known as Sites of Specific Scientific Interest and Special Protection Areas).

We have been doing a lot of work to improve the way customers perceive us in 2018/19. For example, our new bill redesign provides a more simplified and accessible design to make it easier for customers to understand as well as promoting additional support services such as our Priority Services. We have also been working to improve our customers’ experiences when we are doing work in their areas and have a dedicated team to keep our digital communication channels updated. We also have a separate team to focus on improving how we implement street works, as customers regularly tell us we should be doing more in this area. We have issued an online panel to complement the findings from the annual survey and understand in more detail what customers’ expectations are around our operational response when we are completing work.

We have reported a SOSI value of 100 for 2018/19 (and every year to date in AMP6), indicating our customers can expect a sufficient supply of water, with no restrictions during dry weather. This is due to our effective operational management in response to dry weather conditions; we continue to ensure that our supply meets demand.

During the year supply interruptions have been directly impacted by two significant weather events that led to an increase in the number of bursts and leaks on our network. The year began with increased bursts and leakage associated with the ‘beast from the east’ extreme freeze-thaw weather. There was further stress to the network during the hot, dry summer, which was characterised by increased demand and ground movement associated with exceptional levels of soil moisture deficit. Furthermore, a supply interruption event at Frenchay in November 2018 added 2.74 minutes to our reported performance.

This is impacted by the government’s conversion factors for greenhouse gas reporting. In July 2018 the government released an updated set of Grid Emissions Factors (GEFs). These factors are used to calculate the indirect emission of greenhouse gases from the import and consumption of electricity from the grid. The government’s updated GEF dropped steeply from 2017/18 to 2018/19. This is a direct result of the successive closure and conversions of the UK’s coal fire power stations, matched by an increase in low carbon energy sources (primarily natural gas) and renewables. The hot and dry summer of 2018 however lead to an increase in energy consumption in our supply area over the period.

We are working to implement a number of substantial projects over the coming year that will directly offset the import of energy from the grid and lower overall energy consumption, including:

• The role out of an automated pump scheduling system, that will look to optimise individual pumps, pump-sets and whole source selection;
• Installation of solar panels at key sites;
• Installation of a gas powered generator at Purton treatment works.

Water quality is at the heart of our monitoring and maintenance of our treatment works, to ensure high standards are maintained in our assets. We have a long track record of achieving zero turbidity events. For 2018/19 we have again met our target, which means we have again been successful in ensuring consistently good treated water enters our supply system.

Despite having below average customer water bills compared to the rest of the industry, our performance for this year has declined. We have a continuous improvement action plan in place with our operation contact centre, which is focusing on training around resolution at the first point of contact. This is regularly mentioned as a reason for dissatisfaction in this measure, so we do except it to improve in the near future.

Although we were unable to meet our target for this year, almost 98% of the samples collected were fully compliant with the discharge consent conditions. We have plans for a remedial scheme for the Reed Bed discharge at Barrow to mitigate the risk of manganese failures, which historically have presented a seasonal challenge to compliance. Currently we have interim measures in place until the remedial scheme is complete. In addition, the installation of the new mixer in the sludge holding tank at Purton has proved effective and no compliance failures have been reported this year from in-house discharge monitoring. We are working closely with the Environment Agency to assess the feasibility of compliance with the limits of the new discharge consent for Blagdon fisheries. The consent came into force from 1 February 2018 and after a two-year review period the feasibility of compliance will be decided.