Tackling leakage, protecting homes from flooding and ensuring improvements to drinking water quality continue to be among top priorities together with ensuring resilient and reliable services for customers right across the 32,000km of sewer network and 17,000km of water pipes.
The next 12 months will see the roll out of the final stage of the group’s 2015 to 2020 £1.1 billion pound investment plan and a number of large scale projects across the whole of the region are planned.
These include:
- A £21 million pound project to construct two new water treatment works in Berwick and Wooler. This will provide more than 25,000 customers in the north Northumberland area with a high-quality, reliable supply of water into the future.
- Cleaning and upgrading 9 km of pipe at 18 different locations across the North Tyneside, Gateshead and Newcastle areas. The £3 million project will benefit 500,000 customers with excellent tap water quality, now and into the future. Work began in August 2018 and will be complete in summer 2019.
- £46 million of investment work will continue at our Horsley water treatment works this year. The project will protect the treatment process and will make sure we continue to supply clean, clear drinking water to over 1 million of our customers in Tyneside now and well into the future.
The company’s extensive investment programme not only brings major improvements for customers it also supports thousands of jobs and local businesses who supply products and services.
Customers will see a slight increase in their charges for the 2019/20 period, with the average household paying around £1.12 per day for all of their drinking water and sewerage services
This small increase of just 2p a day / around £7 a year is below the rate of inflation and means that water and sewerage bills in the North East remain among the lowest in the country.
This small increase will go towards the company continuing its multi-million pound improvement programme to maintain and improve drinking water quality, maintain a robust wastewater network, protect the environment and to deliver unrivalled customer service to our 2.7 million customers in the North East.
Heidi Mottram, Northumbrian Water’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “Providing a first class reliable service for our customers that is great value for money is our number one priority. We are investing millions of pounds in our region to make sure we can deliver this for our customers.
“Our plans for this year will not only ensure that our communities continue to have a reliable and resilient supply of clean, clear tap water that tastes good but will also help to provide much needed work for local companies and secure jobs in the regions we supply.
“Efficiency and value for money continue to be a major focus for us and we’re keeping bills as low as possible for our communities. Our household customers will only pay, on average, around £1.12 per day for their drinking water and sewerage services – one of the lowest in the country – and this is really important to us.
“We are very aware that some people have difficulty managing the family budget and the affordability of our services is always a concern. We offer many ways to assist people through our SupportPLUS scheme and we’d urge any customers who think they may experience difficulty to get in touch with us as soon as possible.”
