Portsmouth Water’s bills remain the lowest in England and Wales

Portsmouth Water continues to maintain its position of delivering the lowest water bills in England and Wales but at the same time providing industry-leading levels of service to customers. Only recently, we have been ranked by the Institute of Customer Service as the highest performing Company in our sector for delivering service to customers.

CEO Bob Taylor stated “we have adapted our ways of working during the Covid-19 outbreak to continue to deliver a very high-quality water service, providing a safe, secure and reliable supply of high-quality drinking water to our customers which at the same time represents excellent value for money”.

“For 2020/21, we have reduced our bills by 4% (effective from 1 July). This means our average household water bill will be £102 – considerably lower than any other water company with the average household water bill for England and Wales being £186.”

Despite delivering the lowest water bills in England and Wales, the Company is mindful of the current economic pressures on family incomes, especially for the more vulnerable members of our society. In 2016 we introduced our ‘Helping Hand Tariff’, which is specifically designed to help households with an overall income lower than Government’s low-income threshold (currently £16,335). This caps the water bill at our minimum charge (from 1st July this will be £75.75). So far, more than 8,400 customers have taken advantage of this tariff.

Even with the lowest charges in England and Wales, we are fully committed to further enhancing our service including:

• Development of Havant Thicket Winter Storage Reservoir – a £130 million investment. The reservoir will create a strategic new water source for the South East and allow bulk supplies to Southern Water, as well as being a community facility and new habitats for wildlife
• Maintaining our industry-leading performance for leakage reduction, improving our detection and repair activities by developing and adopting industry leading techniques, ensuring we will meet our long term target of a further 15% reduction by 2024/25
• Promoting biodiversity on our landholdings and within the wider environment and the delivery of our Catchment Management Plan where we work with local farmers and landowners to stop at source potential water quality problems such as nitrate pollution, rather than build expensive treatment solutions to remove the problem after the event. This will help maintain our already excellent water quality.
• Continue to promote household water efficiency and encourage meters for those customers who will benefit financially

Ensure customers who need support are on our Priority Services Register. We added over 32,000 customers who are over 70 to our register in April to ensure we prioritised them for help in an emergency as part of our Covid-19 response.