The 2022 drought presented us with many challenges across the region and the changing climate landscape tells us that there will be more challenges to come, writes Laura Flowerdew, Chief Customer and Digital Officer, South West Water.
This was a time when our water resources were under immense pressure as we saw our reservoirs drop to their lowest levels ever and we couldn’t have made it through that without the support of our customers - we know they appreciate how precious water is every day of the year and that’s why we want to continue helping them save water.
Once the drought started to set in, we began working with customers right away through our Stop The Drop campaign and gave out over 100,000 free water-saving devices.
At the same time, we launched a customer incentive scheme by asking Cornwall to help Stop The Drop in reservoir levels, offering a £30 credit if Colliford Reservoir saw storage boost from 14% to 30% by 31 December 2022 – which our customers achieved thanks to their hard work.
But water is not just precious during a drought. It’s important to save this increasingly scarce resource all year round – and through our Water is Precious campaign we are working to meet the challenges that climate change presents.
And of course, reducing water consumption not only conserves precious water, but it also saves customers money on bills and protects the beautiful environment we all treasure.
Planning and investment
We also know it is important we share how hard we are working to deliver resilient water resources across the region.
By repurposing disused quarries, introducing desalination to Cornwall, and finding and fixing more leaks than ever, by 2025 we aim to boost the region’s resources in Cornwall by 45% and in Devon by 30% - we’ve already reached this target in Devon, while increasing resources by 30% in Cornwall.
We are investing £125 million to increase our water resources, minimise the water we take from the environment and ensure we all protect our supplies by using only the water we need.
Like us, our customers are passionate that we invest in ensuring we have secure, resilient water supplies, to cope with an increasing population and the challenges of climate change.
Community Roadshow events
This is why we are going out and meeting with them in person by hosting Community Roadshow events.
These have so far proved to be great opportunities for customers to come and talk to our field experts and have their questions and concerns both listened to and answered.
These events allow us to share how our networks operate, and what we do to ensure we are investing and improving those networks and showcase our plans for further improvement and investment.
Our customers have told us they want us to find new ways of charging, and we want to ensure that the bills our customers pay are fair and reflect usage.
We also know that with the cost of living crisis, affordability of household bills is a concern, and so helping customers benefit from lower consumption through lower bills, is a win-win situation.
Innovative new tariffs
That’s why we are also looking at how we introduce new and innovative tariffs that deliver fairer charging structures, where customers who use less – pay less.
We launched our first tariff trial in February, which will see household customers in Cornwall receive a credit of up to £30 if the county collectively reduces its water consumption by 10% between then and April 30, or £10 if a 5% reduction is seen.
By the middle of March, we had already seen demand reduce by 4.8%, showing the great progress already being made. If we can reach the target, it will allow us to use this type of tariff more widely going forward to incentivise lower water usage.
Earlier this month we announced our second innovative trial which will give customers the chance to save money on their bills by reducing their water usage.
The Smart Saver tariff will begin on April 1 for a selection of customers in Barnstaple and works by offering a cheaper water rate for low consumption use, with rates increasing if higher consumption is seen.
We expect that around 90% of customers taking part will see a reduction in their bills because of the tariff, saving lots of water in the process!
Finding and fixing leaks
We’ve also introduced new initiatives to support our customers in both finding and fixing leaks as around 30% of leaks are now typically found on their own properties.
We recently sent 550,000 leaky loo strips as a new trial for customers across Cornwall and parts of Devon to identify leaking toilets, some of which waste 400 litres of water daily.
As part of the trial, we’ll contribute up to £150 per customer towards the repair of those leaks.
Not all private leaks are because of leaky loos though, so we’re also providing 6,000 innovative leak detection devices called LeakBots.
These clip onto a water pipe near an internal stop tap and can detect if there is a constant flow of water – providing an alert to the customer’s smartphone.
Alongside this work in homes across the county, we are also finding and fixing more leaks than ever before on our own network, both through the hard work of our leakage teams, as well as through utilising innovative techniques including satellites to find leaks two metres underground, drone pilots to cover hard to reach places across Dartmoor and Exmoor, and detection dogs that can sniff out leaks in challenging terrain.
Valuing this precious resource
On March 22 we celebrated World Water Day – a day that focuses on the importance of drinking water and raises awareness of the 2.2 billion people still living without access to safe water.
As it is every year, this was a time to reflect on how fortunate we are to be able to simply turn on the tap to access clean, fresh drinking water, and how we can’t forget that this is a luxury many don’t have.
I hear many amazing stories about how water efficient many in the region are, appreciating the need to value water and conserve our precious resource.
Water is not only precious, but we also simply can’t live without it. This is why we are striving to work alongside our customers to ensure that our taps keep flowing well into the future.
