Southern Water has published a plan to rapidly improve performance between 2023 and 2025 - the Turnaround Plan sets out the water company’s commitment to achieving significant improvements in its environmental performance and customer service.

The water company is already taking steps longer term to drastically reduce the use of storm overflows, improve river water quality and decarbonise the water industry.

Introducing the plan, Lawrence Gosden, Chief Executive Officer at Southern Water said:

“We know our performance is not yet good enough, and we have an ambitious plan to address this, focused on the operational turnaround of the company.

“Our Turnaround Plan will deliver a short sharp ambitious improvement by 2025, particularly in terms of our environmental performance.

“It includes four clear outcomes that we’re promising to deliver, improving our service to customers and the environment.

“It will take time, however, to materially reduce storm overflows. For this we need to redesign how the entire sewage system works. We’ve been working hard with our partners in the community to make a start on this, and have advanced plans which we’ll announce in May 2023.

“We know these plans are ambitious, however, we have 2,500 dedicated scientists, engineers and industry professionals working for Southern Water. They are all committed to making this plan a reality.”

The company has set the following four outcomes, together with actions it will take to drive improvement.

A reliable supply of water for our customers – actions will include:

• Improving the reliability of water supply works by putting in place new assets and improving maintenance. This includes an investment of £150 million in the complete overhaul of the company’s four four largest water supply works with the delivery of 103 projects
• Tactical investment at 20 sites to improve reliability and output by 50ML/d
• Using digital technology to build next-level smart networks with new technology, including sensors, smart meters and artificial intelligence to reduce leakage and enable teams to respond more quickly.
• Improving the management and control of sites and networks through applied manufacturing thinking and improving core systems and processes.
• Roll-out of a new risk assessment approach to enable safe control of work on assets
• Roll-out of new contracts and ways of working to improve customer management and operational response

Healthy rivers and seas – actions will include:

• Building capacity and resilience at wastewater treatment works to reach 99%+ compliance with treatment and permit standards. This means making sure pumping stations and networks continue to operate effectively as the climate changes.
• Making sure assets work to capacity. Updating maintenance standards and proactive control to stop assets failing, and developing an improved emergency response.
• Digitalising the sewer network to reduce pollutions and flooding, using industry-leading monitors, artificial intelligence for prediction and maintenance
• Digitalise the network by installing 23,000 sewer level monitors and 1,300 Event Duration Monitors to allow the company to predict spills and network issues before they happen
• Delivery of the ‘Go To Green’ programme – £25 million of tactical interventions at 45 sites to make sure treatment works reliably meet standards
• Reduce the number of spills from storm overflows to fewer than 18 by removing excess surface water from the company’s systems
• Increase the durability of sites and networks by upgrading 52 pumping stations, increasing resilience at over 700 pumping stations to allow them to reset automatically and investing over £40 million on new pumps and control systems
• Reduce the number of flooding incidents by having greater visibility of flows through the network by using Artificial Intelligence and case managing flooding hotspots on the network
• Improve the accuracy and efficiency of spill reporting by automating processes and using artificial intelligence

Trusted and easy customer service – actions will include:

• Making things easier for customers by improving the on-line experience and creating a new website, improving customer journey, data quality and complaints process.
• Creating a customer culture. Making sure that every colleague understands customers and their unique needs.
• Better engagement with communities through improved multi-channel and direct communications, education programmes and regular stakeholder forums.

Empowered and supported colleagues – actions will include:

• Improving the safety of colleagues with the introduction of a new company-wide risk assessment mobile safety app
• Review app usage and improve over time to minimise health and safety risk
• Working with care to embed health and safety as a key way of working with upskilling, training and onboarding programmes.
• Managing compliance through new systems, inspections and assurance.

The water company wll be reporting on progress every six months through to 2025.  Southern Water said that all activity will be carried out in close liaison with customers, to make sure the cost of the improvements is balanced with keeping bills affordable. 

Click here to download the full plan