Sutton and East Surrey Water (SESW) is anticipating a £7 bill increase for customers in order to deliver the improvements set out in its AMP6 business plan.
In its draft business plan, now out to consultation, the utility anticipates an average bill to reach £193 by 2019/2020, excluding inflation, which equates to an average increase of £1.40 a year.
The Plan explains how the company has set its priorities and targets for the next five years based on some initial consultation and also considers a number of objectives much further into the future to ensure the context for the 2015 to 2020 plan is set against a number of long term goals.
“Following consultation with customers and other stakeholders we have identified five ‘outcomes’ or goals that we feel strike a balance between customers’ views, stakeholders and the Company’s statutory obligations. We have built our business plan for 2015-2020 around achieving these,” said Anthony Ferrar, Sutton and East Surrey Water’s Managing Director.
The ‘outcomes’ are:
- To provide a reliable and sufficient supply of safe, high-quality drinking water
- To offer good value for money and keep bills at a fair and reasonable level
- To increase the resilience of our network to drought, flooding and equipment failure
- To deliver consistently high levels of service
- To reduce our impact on the environment while seeking to make a positive contribution to its quality
In order to attain these outcomes, SESW will aim to reduce leakage by 500,000 litres per day and reduce the number of burst pipes by increasing investment in the mains network.
Other aims include improving the resilience of its network through increasing the number of homes that can be supplied by more than one treatment works from 36% to 56% (and 100% by 2025), and fitting an additional 32,000 water meters, increasing the proportion of homes with a meter from 48% to 64%.
The plan also includes a proposal to introduce a discounted tariff to help those in genuine financial difficulty. The impact of this will not change the average overall bill, SESW said.
This particular proposal is the Company’s response to a separate Government initiative, which a number of water companies are considering.
“We have tried to strike a balance between the price customers have told us they are willing to pay and the need for improvements to our network and customer service,” said Ferrar.
“For the record, our performance measures for the current Business Plan period (2010-2015) show we are on track to meet our targets.”
The consultation process will end on 7 October. Following this, the company will review and update its Plan before submitting it to Ofwat in December.
“Our research shows our customers appreciate that, here in the South East, it has never been more important to ensure that their water supply remains reliable and affordable in the long term,” said Ferrar. “This plan aims to achieve that.”
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