Wessex Water success

Wessex Water is continuing it’s remarkably good performance. They continues to be the best performing water company. Wessex Water have  topped Ofwat’s new Service Incentive Mechanism (SIM) for all areas of customer service as well as the provision of water and sewerage services. On customer satisfaction 98% of customers who contacted them rated their service as good or very good.

Wessex Water have just released their interim financial results and have continued to perform very strongly out performing their capital and operational allowances by more than any other water company. Wessex Water have also won two environmental performance awards for their work on catchment management and work by GENco on waste reduction and recycling. Wessex Water were the best performing water company in the recently published Carbon Reduction Commitment league tables.

Wessex Water have for most of the time since privatisation been at the top of the league tables. They are very unusual in having had the same Chief Executive, Colin Skellett,  since 1988 and several other of their Directors are  almost as long serving. It’s the view of this blog that this can not be a coincidence and perhaps something other companies should consider emulating. 

Water White Paper

Today sees the release of the long awaited Water White Paper. It starts to address what needs to be done to increase the resilience of our water system and tackle the combined effects of climate change and a rising population.

Its main proposal is to move towards catchment management to tackle the issue of diffuse pollution and abstraction licensing. It recognises that only a quarter of our rivers and lakes are fully functioning ecosystems.

While the general tenor is to be welcomed its disappointing that the White Paper is more about talk than action. The legislation needed to tackle abstraction licensing is not planned to be introduced until the next Parliament. Given the current issues with water supply can we really wait that long?