Yorkshire Water has stepped up its leakage reduction work to ensure it is in a strong position to tackle any bursts brought about by the freezing weather.

The company, which serves 4.3million customers, is spending £7million increasing its operational presence and improving its IT systems around leakage monitoring. Yorkshire Water currently has 140 people working on leakage detection - a 15% increase on this time last year - and is recruiting an additional 120 people to focus in this area between January and March 2011.

118 field technicians have been deployed to respond to day-to-day network and customer issues, supported by a further 400 people from the company's service partners Morrison Utility Services and H20, who are responsible for carrying out repairs and improvements to its water supply network.

Yorkshire Water is also employing a number of long-term measures to improve its leakage performance including investing in a new state-of-the-art IT system which will improve the way it collates and analyses leakage data, and increase the coverage of real-time data coming into its control centre in Bradford.

During the last week the firm has seen a 60% increase in customer calls to its contact centre in Bradford to report possible leaks and frozen water pipes. The company has been busier than usual on the ground attending around 68 bursts a day – a 23% increase on the same period last year.

Tony O'Shea, water network optimisation manager at Yorkshire Water, commented:

"We're absolutely committed to reducing leakage and with a colder than average winter forecast for the region, there is a great deal of activity already underway to ensure that we’re in the best possible position and doing everything we can to minimise the cold weather impact on our pipes.

"We have a proven track record of achieving our leakage targets, having reduced leakage on our pipes by 45% over the last 15 years, so to narrowly miss our leakage target last year was very disappointing and not something we ever want to repeat.”