Delivering for our customers
Our parent company, Pennon, has confirmed plans to deliver what matters most to customers and communities for the period 2025-2030, with record levels of investment across the South West, Bristol, Bournemouth and Sutton and East Surrey. Our £3.2bn investment will see further improvements across the main customer priorities – securing safe, clean drinking water, reducing the use of storm overflows across the regions’ bathing waters and protecting the environment, with investments in renewables.
Our 3 priorities
Water Quality and Water Resilience:
We're investing in new treatment works, reservoirs, and addressing lead pipe issues to ensure clean and reliable water for all.
- Upgrading a third of water treatment works in Devon and Cornwall
- Reducing leakage on our networks to less than 10% and less than 4% on customer properties
- Creating a water grid to ensure all our strategic reservoirs are connected
- Investing in large reservoirs, starting with Cheddar 2 in Bristol
Delivering for Customers and Addressing Affordability:
Despite doubling our investment program, we're committed to keeping bills as low as possible and supporting people through the cost-of-living crisis.
- Extend our zero-water poverty pledge to 2030
- Ensure fair charging for all our customers
- Accelerate smart metering, helping household customers use 5% less water
- Introducing a £200m affordability package to support our customers
Reaching Net Zero and Enhancing Environmental Gains:
We're dedicated to achieving Net Zero by 2030, investing in climate-independent water sources, and strengthening our environmental efforts.
- Planting 300,000 trees to boost nature recovery, launching our 1,000 ponds initiative and a new £2m Nature Recovery Fund
- Recycling more waste and generating enough energy to power 20,000 homes
- Expand our award-winning Upstream Thinking catchment management programme to deliver 146,500 hectares by 2030
How do we form our business plan?
- Statutory requirements
Our plan is driven first by Government policy – what we are legally required to deliver. This includes public health, drinking water quality, wastewater compliance, drainage security and safety.
These always come first because they are legal obligations and they support our environmental objectives.
- Customer priorities
Customer insights help us to shape how we deliver positive outcomes. This includes research and engagement, willingness to pay evidence, complaints and service feedback.
This helps decide how obligations are met and where extra investment matters most.
- Regulatory requirements
We propose the performance targets and expectations for efficiency that are challenged by our regulators. These include service standards, performance targets and incentives/penalties.
These expectations shape how we plan and prioritise investment.
- Forming the business plan
We bring together customer feedback, legal requirements and long-term needs of our network to develop our business plan.
- Ofwat review
Ofwat reviews the business plan in detail, including assessing the cost of financing, ensuring statutory requirements are met and confirming that proposed costs and performance targets are realistic. It then sets the ‘financial determination’ which defines allowed revenue, required service levels, efficiency expectations and investment allowances.
Overall, Ofwat’s role is to make sure the plan is fair affordable and deliver the right outcomes for customers.
We continue to work closely with Ofwat to review the business plan regularly, ensuring it remains on track, meetings customer needs and is cost effective, with changes made where necessary.