Thames Water – A Response

A while ago, some of you may recall I sent a snotty email to Thames Water’s Customer Service People. For ease of reference, this is what I sent…

To whom it may concern,
If, as your current news story puts it, “Approximately a quarter of all leakage is on customers’ pipes.�, that still means that three-quarters of all leakage is on TW’s side of the pipes.
How does a utility company justify selling people a product, and then telling them they can’t use it?
How does a utility company justify leaks that amount to the equivalent of 6.6 million people’s daily usage ( using the DFID’s estimate of 135 litres per person per day ) every day ?
I’m just interested to know.
Sincerely
Lyle

In return, I today received this scintillating effort…

Thank you for your e-mail of 21 June 2006.

I note your comments regarding our water leakage rates and your concerns are understandable.

We know that we need to improve our leakage detection and repair rates and are working hard to achieve this. We currently have over 150 repair teams fixing leaks every day. We also have leakage detection teams working during the night to detect and pinpoint leaks.

OFWAT have agreed that we need to focus our attention on reducing leakage from our ageing mains network in London. We have been set very tough targets and it is not an easy task but we are determined to resolve this issue. The sheer volume of pipework means that we cannot complete this overnight and it will take time. We have, however, already made a good start.

During the early part of last year, OFWAT agreed a series of bill increases over a period of 5 years. We have been given strict guidelines on how this money should be spent and last year we began a #3.1 billion project to improve our services, including replacing thousands of kilometres of ageing water mains throughout our region.

In addition to the money we are already committed to spend on leakage reduction, the extra investment of #150 millioin announced by OFWAT will be funded by shareholders and will accelerate the Victorian Mains Replacement Programme to complete at least an additional 230 miles of new mains by 2010.

For the last 15 years we have been able to provide water services without any restrictions. However we must acknowledge that increased use of water in the home, population growth and climate change are placing increasing demands on our water supplies. To simply ignore these issues and refer everything to our own leakage rates would be irresponsible. Indeed, we have managed with similar leakage rates for the past 15 years without imposing a ban.

We need to employ numerous methods to safeguard our future supplies. We are working hard to increase sources of water, for example more boreholes to access groundwater and seeking planning permission to build a desalination plant to treat salt water in East London. We are doing all we can but we must ask our customers to work with us to conserve water. You may be interested to know that in Berlin, domestic water consumption is 115 litres per person a day compared to London’s 155 litres, although interestingly the prices there are approximately three times as high. Clearly this shows that there is room for water efficiency amongst our customers.

The simple fact of the matter is that this ban is as a direct result of the lack of rainfall and even if we were to repair every leak we would still be in a drought situation.

We do not seek to justify leakage; we are taking on the challenge to improve our services to benefit our customers.

I note that you refer to a particular point made on our website with regard to leaks on customers’ pipes. We use this information to highlight that not all leakage comes from our pipework, however, we wholly acknowledge that our own leakage standards need to be improved.

I appreciate your frustrations but trust that this addresses your concerns and explains our position.

Considering it didn’t answer any of the questions, and in fact studiously avoided being anything except PR flak, I’m currently debating the best response…