A legacy of improvements

Since privatisation we have invested more than £20 billion in maintaining and improving your water and waste water services and the environment.

We have a proud history of maintaining and improving services for Yorkshire We’ve come a long way since the water industry was privatised in 1989. Back then, we inherited an enormous legacy of reservoirs, structures and pipes across our region. Some of these are many decades old.

Since then, we have invested more than £20 billion in maintaining and improving your water and waste water services and we’re immensely proud of what we’ve achieved. Our innovation and investment has resulted in significant environmental improvements, the avoidance of water restrictions since 1996 and better customer services, while bringing jobs, work and wealth creation to our region. We have only been able to pay for these improvements through increases in our charges, and we have been able to keep these to a minimum by finding new and better ways to deliver our service and by re-investing these cost savings where it really matters.

By doing this we are helping to protect you from burst pipes that interrupt your supply, low water pressure, water discolouration, sewer flooding or odour problems, and we are also helping to keep our rivers and beaches clean.

In fact, we are the only water company which has invested with the intention of achieving the ‘excellent’ standard in bathing waters. This means more potential for Blue Flag Awards and tourism for Yorkshire.