A year of challenges, progress and exciting prospects are captured in Sutton and East Surrey Water’s latest review of its performance.

The company has published its Annual Report for 2015/16 which shows, for the first time, how well it is doing against the commitments made in its 2015-2020 business plan – including where it has performed well and where it needs to improve some areas of its water supply service.

The commitments in the Annual Report include those around customer service, affordability, the reliability and quality of water supplies, and environmental impact. Among the performance highlights for 2015/16 are:

Drinking water quality
99.95% of all samples taken met strict water quality regulations
Minimising interruptions
Supply interruptions lasting over three hours were 60% better than target
There were 25% less burst mains than expected (212 instead of 290)
Investing in water
Over £18.1 million invested in the water supply network, including work to upgrade Woodmansterne Water Treatment Works in Chipstead
Saving water
Beating its tough leakage target to achieve a leakage level of just over 24 million litres a day – among the best in the industry
Installing 6,333 water meters to help customers manage their water use
Customer service
Moving over 30,000 customers to paperless billing, and signing up 5,686 customers struggling to pay their water bills to its Water Support scheme
Education
Engaging with 13,314 customers via the company’s environmental education programme.

Anthony Ferrar, Managing Director at Sutton and East Surrey Water, said: “Our focus has been on meeting the six commitments we made to our customers in our 2015-2020 business plan, and I’m delighted that we’ve made good progress on many of them.

“However, our report rightly recognises where we need to do better – for example, while overall customer satisfaction with our service remains high, we have struggled to meet our customer service targets when customers need to contact us. We are already addressing this with a project team in place specifically focusing on improving this area of our business.”

The report also outlines the company’s preparations for the significant changes happening in the water industry in April 2017 – this is when businesses, charities and other non-household customers can choose their supplier of water and sewerage “retail” services – such as customer service, account management and billing activities.

The report also reports the Company’s financial performance for the year, with turnover of £63 million (2014/15 £63 million) and profit before tax at £14.3 million (2014/15 £14.8 million).

Details

Sutton and East Surrey Water’s Annual Report for 2015/16 can be viewed on the Company’s website at www.waterplc.com