'Proactive' approach to leaks required to meet tough Ofwat targets

摘要

Pressure management solutions will spearhead the campaign to meet Ofwat's challenge to water utilities for the AMP7 period - a 15% reduction in each utility's leakage rate by 2025, without increasing base expenditure. Meeting this challenge under such financial constraints will require not only more advanced techniques for detecting leaks, but preventing them from happening in the first place. As of 2019, according to Ofwat, 21% of the water supply in England and Wales was lost in leakage with very little progress being made in recent years to bring that figure down. Between 2012-2013 and 2018-2019, overall water losses across England and Wales fell by just 0.6%. The scale of the challenge, and the threat of severe financial penalties if the target is not met, was deliberately set to shock utilities into modernising (see GWI April 2019 p36).