Bristol Water Performance in 2020/21

Whilst we have achieved our target for this year, our index position has deteriorated since the end of March 2020 by 1.97 index points following the unforeseen impacts, on delivery, of COVID-19 restrictions on our staff. Our staff were however able to mitigate the ongoing impact of Ash Dieback (ADB), which had the potential to materially change the conditions of our woodland assets. Our ADB mitigation project delivered felling of diseased trees to prevent two woodland assets deteriorating, with the remaining tress retaining the woodland structure. As all ash trees continue to deteriorate in condition and further trees require to be removed for protecting human and property health, the biodiversity index value remains at risk for future years and will require further mitigation (as the ADB disease is advancing each year). National trends indicate that the ADB disease in combination with climatic changes will lead to a rapid deterioration in Ash tree health in the short-term (perhaps over the next 6-18 months). We will continue to look for opportunities to remove and replant diseased trees to ensure that the index score does not irreversibly decline.

In addition, our successful delivery of an invasive species management plant (to pull and remove the Himalayan Balsam plant on an annual basis to prevent it becoming the dominant plant in our reedbed habitats) will deliver sufficient mitigation around Chew Valley Lake to reduce the negative impact of this invasive species deteriorating the condition of wetland reedbed/swamp assets.

Although we missed our target for this year, our performance was significantly by the freeze-thaw events of January and February 2021 that resulted in twice the seasonally expected number of burst mains. Despite these adverse weather conditions, our operational and maintenance teams worked tirelessly to keep the effects on our customers to a minimum.

Our operations and maintenance teams have already been through a transformation process from the maintenance-centric approaches of the past that focused on fixing the burst as quickly as possible to the customer-centric approaches of today that focus first on maintaining service to our customers wherever possible. This has led to the development of ‘Continuous Water Supply’ techniques (such as live clamp repairs) and a ‘Safe Control of Operations’ framework, which focuses on minimising stresses on the network wherever possible.

Although it is disappointing that we have seen an increase in our CRI in 2020 when compared to 2019, the score largely consists of isolated bacteriological failures at our service reservoirs and customer properties where. Our investigations concluded that these failures were not representative of the water quality being supplied to consumers and that there is no wider issue within the network. This suggests that the risk to our customers from water compliance sample failures causing an impact on their drinking water has been minimal, but we are never complacent in aiming for zero failures and thoroughly test the root cause of problems and potential risks.

Customer contacts for discoloured (orange/brown) water remain the biggest contributor to appearance contacts (at 73% of all contacts). This discolouration can be primarily attributed to the disturbance of harmless iron sediments within the mains network. Our performance overall is similar to performance reported in previous years (in 2018 and 2019). Although there has been a steady month on month reduction in the number of discoloured contacts during the second half of 2020, we have missed our target. There is no single cause, but the most significant factors that have prevented our improved network performance from achieving this target has been third party use of hydrants and standpipes as well as individual burst main events.

We are pleased to have outperformed our target for this year.

Historically, the majority of taste and odour contacts are associated with problems that develop within internal domestic plumbing systems. Updates to our website have helped to improve the information available to customers. As our network has been working well, this has also contributed to a reduction in taste and odour contacts.

C-MeX is split into a customer service survey and a customer perception survey; we achieved 5th place on the customer service element and 10th place on perception. On customer service, we ask all staff to take accountability for the customer they are in contact with and provide training to ensure that they have the knowledge and skills to do all that they can to resolve the issue right first time.

On customer perception, we have been restricted in what we had planned to do with engaging with our community as a result of COVID-19. The imposed national restrictions and advice to ‘stay at home’ for example resulted in our award-winning Water Bar and plans for installing further water fountains across our supply area put on hold over the last year.

We have also established our ‘Customer Hub’, the aim of which is to bring together our customer services and planning teams closer together, in order to simplify the process and expediate information requests when our customers contact us.

We have a dedicated team which is responsible for processing applications from developers, SLPs and NAVs and we have worked to create a closer working relationship with developers and self-lay providers. We have made significant improvements in timeliness and effectiveness of our response to these customers and we publish technical information that makes it easier for developers and SLPs to understand our costs and approach to developer service. We keep regular contact with our newsletters.

We now offer a range of services for our developer services customers and our results from the first wave are very encouraging. Although we have not met our ambition for this year, the results demonstrate that we are delivering the range of services to a satisfactory level of service.

Based on our supply demand balance for this reporting year we have not met our target for this year. However, the true level of risk to our customer security of supply is minimal, as we exclude the introduction of temporary use bans (TUBs) or Non-Essential Use Ban (NEUB) in order to keep the metric consistent with he assumptions of our baseline WRMP.

If we were to experience a drought in reality the risk to our customers of experiencing severe drought restrictions would be reduced via the implementation of temporary use bans, sometimes called a “hosepipe ban”, whereby restrictions are put in place on a number of customer activities, such as watering their gardens, cleaning their cars or watering their plants using a hosepipe. Such measures have however not been introduced by Bristol Water since 1990. In addition during a very severe drought we would consider implementing a Non-Essential Use Ban (NEUB) to restrict water use further. This would affect water use by both commercial and domestic customers.

Our preferred approach to maintaining our supply-demand balance continues to be focused on optimising the use of our existing water sources while continuing to drive down leakage and water consumption to maintain sustainable use of water resources. Moreover, if we continue to outperform our leakage targets, as we have for 2020/21, the risk to our customers of introducing severe restrictions in a drought will continue to reduce.

We are pleased to have outperformed our target for this year. We aim to provide the right maintenance and whole life care to our assets to ensure that they are reliable and efficient; our steady performance over the last few years demonstrates that we are on the right track to achieving this balance. By providing the right level of care and investment in our assets we are able to provide a resilient supply of quality water with minimal interruptions. This is achieved by assessing all our assets to better understand which have the greater impact on our ability to meet our customer requirements. A lower number reported identifies reduced asset downtime and increased reliability.

This is the lowest level of leakage we have ever achieved. Leakage reduction is consistently a top priority across all our customer research and engagement. It is therefore pleasing that we continue to deliver industry leading levels of leakage reduction. This is despite the fact that we have experienced a complex combination of change of customer usage habits in response to COVID-19, combined with difficult weather conditions in the spring and the summer.

The combination of targeted investment in our network, improved monitoring (leak repairs continue to be monitored so that the largest are targeted as highest priority) and control activities, and our proactive approach to leakage management and leakage reduction initiatives, such as pressure management, continues to see us reduce leakage levels further. Our excellent leakage performance can be attributed to significant effort to reduce leakage on our distribution network with more leakage inspectors deployed, supported with additional technology, whilst working closely with our customers (to provide advice, support and assistance) to minimise leakage. Proactive and reactive pressure reduction activities have also assisted in optimising and calming the network, as well as contributing to reductions in leakage.

Our performance has traditionally been driven by our meter optant policy (those customers who opt into receiving water via a meter by contacting us to request a meter fitting) and our selective metering policy (whereby we install a meter at a property whenever there is a change of occupier), which are in turn impacted by our information campaigns.

The pandemic clearly impacted upon our ability to achieve our meter penetration target this year. The initial period of lockdown required us to completely suspend our metering activities for several months. Even though the restrictions subsequently eased, a reduced level of customer demand for meters, partly due to a reluctance on the part of customers to allow strangers into their homes, and partly due to changed customer priorities, has continued to have a negative impact upon the level of our metering activities.

In preparation for the restart of our marketing activities we brought our meter reversion process online during the year, offering a consistent online experience for our customers. We also now take applications over the phone, significantly shortening the customer journey for those who choose to call us. The meter reversion process is a guarantee that after switching to a meter (for those customers who opt for a meter) the customer, within a two-year period, has the right to revert back to being unmetered.

Our stakeholders’ high satisfaction for this year is based on the positive contribution to the communities that we serve, which our social contract programmes and initiatives aim to achieve. In order to demonstrate to our stakeholders that we have improved our contributions to our local communities, we are undertaking a range of social contract programmes, with specified objectives for the year. Our progress to date can be found on our website and in our Mid-Year Social Contract Benefit and Transparency Report, published in December 2020.

Over recent years we have started a process of significantly increasing the level of pressure monitoring and other sensor deployment in our distribution network. This will ensure we can identify which properties are at risk of low pressure and rectify the problems for our customers in a much quicker timetable.

A number of properties were added to the low pressure register during the year:

• Six properties in Glen View in Stratton-on-the-Fosse were identified as receiving below standard pressure in the summer, mostly caused by the impact of the high demand generated by the hot weather.
• A further seven properties were also identified at Bainsbury View in Stratton-on-the-Fosse later in the summer.

A number of remedial projects over the year have resulted in removing a number of properties from the low pressure register:

• One property has been confirmed to have been separated from the common supply pipe at Norbins Road, Glastonbury.
• Following remedial work and additional pressure measurement monitoring, the seven properties located at Bainsbury View in Stratton-on-the-Fosse were latterly removed.
• We have addressed the poor pressure problems for the six properties located at Glenn View in Stratton-on-the-Fosse.

In addition, a poor pressure complaint is currently being investigated at Southleaze Orchard, Street. As the complaint is still under investigation, we have added this property to our low pressure register for now.

The Wells to Glastonbury and Street area mains scheme in Somerset is expected to be delivered in March 2023.

Reliability of water supply is a top priority for our customers. The Glastonbury and Street zones are supplied from Cheddar Water Treatment Works via a considerable length of “Critical Main” for which currently there is no redundancy. This scheme will ensure that 13,000 properties have resilience of supply by providing an additional route of supply to Windmill Hill Reservoir, maintaining the supply of water to Glastonbury and Street in the event that the main supply route is lost or compromised. It also ensures that those customers in Glastonbury and Street would be at a significantly less risk of experiencing water supply interruptions of over 24 hours.

We believe that increased household consumption due to the rise in homeworking and school closures, coupled with a decrease in household income due to furlough and job losses as a result of the pandemic, has significantly contributed to this increase in water poverty.

We offer three discounted tariffs to make sure we can help customers who find it hard to pay their water charges, with 20,419 customers receiving assistance through these measures:

• 8,674 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.
• 8,395 households are on our ‘Watersure Plus’ metered tariff, this is for customers in receipt of certain benefits, and are defined as ‘vulnerable’, either because they have a medical condition or a large family.
• 3,350 customers are on our ‘Pension Credit Discount’ 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.

In addition to the social tariff schemes, 3,407 households are currently benefitting from our ‘Restart’ scheme, which helps customers to clear their debt. We also offer metering, water efficiency support and flexible payment plans to customers.

This is a challenging target and regretfully, we have not met our target for this year.

One of our biggest challenges we face is customer perception and their understanding of the value of water, and in how we work with customers and other stakeholders to educate them on demand management and the benefits of water efficiency. Our future water availability and keeping water in the environment relies heavily on customers, consumers and communities really understanding the value of water and by working with us to make sure we have a better, more resilient future. Unfortunately, our performance, has been severely impacted by COVID-19, because customers are rightly using more water as they are at home more and there is enhanced focus on hygiene and hand washing.

Moreover, it is worth mentioning that this year has seen a long period of hot and dry weather at the beginning of the summer, which is an additional driver contributing to the higher domestic usage observed this year.

We provide a range of free services to support customers in vulnerable circumstances, such as large print bills, support to read a meter, or ensuring consistent supply for those who depend on water for medical equipment at home.

Although we have not met our target, our score of 82% is as a result of only seven customers (2%) being dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the service they receive through the PSR. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic we continued to provide our additional support to customers in vulnerable circumstances and maintained partnerships with local charities and organisations.

We have registered an additional 5,823 households on the PSR in 2020/21, taking the number registered from 7,583 to 13,406. We provide a range of free services to support customers in vulnerable circumstances, such as large print bills, support to read a meter, or ensuring consistent supply for those who depend on water for medical equipment at home.

For customers in vulnerable circumstances accessing the support they need across multiple utility providers can be time consuming and stressful. Safe and secure sharing of data across water and energy companies, with customer consent, can reduce this burden and enable companies to offer those consumers seamless priority support. Unfortunately, we have not met our year-end target; when setting our targets we assumed that a planned national data share project would now be live, as it was planned to go ahead in 2020/21. This would have granted us data access to customers in vulnerable circumstances from other utility providers, as customers would only need to register with one company rather than all of those signed up to the project. This national project has however been put on hold and so achieving our ambitious targets has become even more challenging.

As part of our social contract Vulnerability Programme, we have established a data share with Western Power Distribution. This local data share partnership enables us to receive customer data (with their permission) from our local electricity distribution network operator. It also means far less fuss for our customers as they only need to contact one of the companies to ensure they receive the help they need.

Our outperformance for this year has been achieved by providing advice to farms, for example around soil and nutrient management, and by supporting farms to improve their infrastructure where this will reduce pollution risk, for example by improving slurry storage capacity. We have delivered the following support and interventions:

• Nutrient management plans and associated soil and manure analysis and spreading risk maps on 15 farms.
• A constructed wetland on one farm.
• Watercourse fencing on two farms.
• Yard improvements (roofing/concreting) on three farms.
• New slurry stores on two farms.
• New dirty water store on one farm.
• Slurry / solids separator on one farm.
• Advice and support around nutrient and soil management to many farms across the catchments.

Our catchment management efforts contribute to our aim to maintain raw water quality in our sources, so that the water is easier and less expensive to treat to a potable standard. It will also help to maintain our SSSIs in favourable conservation status and surrounding waterbodies in good ecological status or potential under the Water Framework Directive. This benefits the local communities by improving the environment and enhancing natural capital.

Whilst we have ended the year significantly above our target, our performance is dominated by three large events (at Rose Green Road, at Lawrence Hill and an incident at Yate caused by a third party damaging our main) collectively accounting for 25 minutes and 10 seconds (83% of our total performance). During the last 12 months we have focused on:

• On the ground assistance, such as a focus on Continuous Waters Supply (CWS) techniques (plug-in alternative supplies, over-land mains and rezones) as well as improvements to our lessons-learned review processes.
• Undertaking work to understand the impact of critical pipe failures and to prepare event ‘Grab Packs’ to enable expediated on-site activity during an event.
• Developing ways of visualising key geographic information and working their use into business-as-usual activities.
• Reviews into the recent increases in third-party damage to our mains network, which have adversely impacted our customers.

Our underlying performance (5.12 minutes. when excluding the three large events, which is below this year’s target) shows that these measures are taking effect

We are pleased that despite the challenging environment due to COVID-19, our end of year performance is 33% lower than our target for this year.

At Bristol Water we aim to provide the best possible service at all times. For all complaints we consider what action to take to put things right. Complaint resolution and handling is a key focus of our customer experience strategy, every complaint is handled by our Customer Care Team where a designated member of staff ensures that the complaint is resolved. The team provide root cause information which feeds into our learnings and future improvements to prevent repeat complaints.

During the reporting year, 3,493 samples were taken from our 17 treatment works (sampling points). None of the sites hit or exceeded the 95th percentile 0.5 NTU threshold. By monitoring turbidity, we consider the following:

• The use of turbidity as a measure to provide assurance of the optimal operation of filter performance, where filtration is used to address identified risks associated with chlorine resistant pathogens in the source water.
• The impact of turbidity on the efficiency of disinfection processes.
• The effect that turbidity has on the aesthetics of the treated water.

We have a long track record of achieving zero turbidity events and we are confident that this will continue into futures years as a result of our approach.

The risk to our customers arising from a higher level of void properties is that these properties are at risk of being unknowingly occupied to us and therefore debt could be building. It is very important that we keep a close management on the void level to prevent this happening. It is therefore encouraging that our level of performance this year has seen a considerable reduction from our baseline position on 31 March 2020. We have achieved this through the policy started in 2019/20 of metering potentially void properties proactively, and by working with Pelican as we outlined when setting our business plan target to ensure that voids were periodically checked by aligning our processes and information systems. Our analysis of void properties has revealed that void rates tend to be higher for unmetered properties compared to those which are metered (as meter readings can identify consumption at a property), so we are continuing to increase meter penetration across our supply area, to help reduce the number of voids in our supply area. This reduction will lead to fairer bills for our customers overall as they will not be carrying the financial burden of other households that would not be being billed. In addition, we are continuing to use third party data providers to augment our existing data (such as via HM Land Registry).

One method we use to reduce the number of voids is to conduct property visits. However due to the pandemic we made the decision to not visit properties for most of the year, in order to follow the national social distancing guidelines. This temporarily saw the void number increase during this period but this only lasted for a short time. This is because another method we have undertaken to reduce the number of voids is by performing ongoing checks of HM Land Registry, to establish whether our records of void properties align to the records of ownership of the registry.

We are pleased to report that our outage level continues to remain low . Our high levels of service reflects our approach by responding immediately to unplanned outage failures - we aim to fix all outages within a working day. This means that unless there is a reason why the outage cannot be fixed that is outside of our control (for example due to the lead time required on parts to fix the outage or because of specific treatment process conditions) all outages are addressed before they exceed the 24 hour duration criteria.

Value for money is an important concept in measuring whether customers consider that the service that we provide is worth what they pay. We are pleased with our performance this year (only 3% of our customers rated the value for money of the service they receive as either poor or very poor).

CCW also conduct an annual Water Matters survey, which tracks household customers’ views and preferences on the services and support that they receive from the water companies in England and Wales. We continue to achieve an encouraging level of performance in the CCW Water Matters survey. The survey is a useful proxy method for our customers to understand our performance, as it includes a question on how far customers agreed that the water services they receive represents value for money.

There are 50 lines on the WINEP and we have started work to deliver on our WINEP obligations. Our projects have progressed well through 2020/21, however as none of the WINEP schemes are due for completion in 2020/21 we have met our target for this year.

We aim to deliver all of our obligations under the WINEP included within this performance commitment. By doing so we will be providing benefit to the environment through assessment of our abstraction impacts; river restoration and adaptive flow management; and protection of species including prevention of invasive non-native species transfer and protection of key species such as eels.

There are 50 lines on the WINEP, which include: risk assessments, surveillance programmes, a biodiversity action plan and a feasibility study. As none of the WINEP schemes are due for completion in 2020/21 we are able to confirm that we have met our target for this year.

Throughout the year there have been eight non-compliant samples, from of a total of 471 samples collected. Although we have not met our full compliance target for this year, we did achieve full compliance in April, June, July, September and December and 98% of the samples collected overall were fully compliant with the discharge consent conditions, which is consistent with our performance in previous years.

We are constantly reviewing the reasons for the small number of failures that are preventing our full compliance, with a view to implementing remedial measures to drive our compliance higher. Our ability to report on full compliance has been significantly impacted since the introduction of a discharge consent (which came into force from 1 February 2018) at Blagdon fisheries (downstream of the trout rearing pens). Since the discharge consent was introduced, compliance for samples collected at the site has proved challenging; for this year half of our compliance failures were recorded at this site. As an example to demonstrate the impact Blagdon is having on compliance, removing the four non-compliant samples reported from the site this year would have resulted in reporting compliance at 99%.

We do anticipate improvements in compliance at Blagdon Fisheries and Barrow Treatment Works as the remedial measures identified this year are put in place. In addition, our sampling technicians who visit sites to collect routine compliance samples are receiving additional training on identifying risks to quality whilst on site, and improvements have made to internal reporting lines to ensure that findings are communicated more effectively when identified so that interventions can be undertaken more proactively.