Customers could see savings as Water hits huge surplus

Wednesday 29 August 2018

2017 saw Guernsey Water exceed its savings target by nearly 30%, as it finished the year with a £387,000 surplus.

The utility revealed these figures in its annual report, and said it was now considering how the savings could "be shared with customers" - a move that could see overall bills frozen next year.

It said despite ongoing cost pressures, a £428,000 reduction in operating costs helped it to achieve the surplus, beating its target of £300,000.

The report also showed that the second year of its new business plan was successfully implemented, seeing it invest £4.5m. on maintaining and improving its infrastructure. This included the investment in the Vale Road sewer system, which allowed more waste-water to be transferred to Belle Greve and reduced the risk of sewer flooding and sewer overflows.

Guernsey Water General Manager Steve Langlois said: “Guernsey Water is in excellent shape. Importantly for customers, in delivering the second year of our business plan we started to develop a culture of continuous improvement in our services. This means that things will continue getting even better for our customers in the future.

"On average our metered customers spent just £1.15 a day on our water and wastewater services in 2017. Considering the complexity of our day-to-day operations and the amount of investment we make in our infrastructure every year, this is fantastic value for money. But the really good news for customers is that we are looking into whether we can share the savings we made last year with them by freezing their overall bills in 2019.”

Moving forwards, the utility company said it would be looking into what is a "serious imbalance" between the income it receives from customers’ wastewater charges and its expenditure on wastewater services. Currently the average metered customer spends just 28 pence per day on wastewater charges, yet it costs 63 pence per day to provide the wastewater service.

The opposite is true for water services, which cost less to provide at just 51 pence per day, yet the average metered customer spends 87 pence per day to receive this service.

Mr Langlois said: “We are considering how we address this imbalance, at the same time we will also be considering whether we can share the savings we made last year with our customers by freezing their overall bills next year."

2017 also saw work begin on the development of a surface water management strategy, which will ensure that customers are better protected from flooding, and that wastewater is safely returned to the environment well into the future.  Guernsey Water is also on target to make further reductions in operational costs by bringing Juas water treatment works back on line later this year, after good progress was made with its refurbishment in 2017. 

Drinking water quality standards remained high at 99.85%. Customer satisfaction was also independently measured by the Customer Service Institute for the first time, at 79.5%, this compared really well with a UK utilities sector average of 78.2%.

A full copy of the Annual Report for 2017 can be found here water.gg/annualreport17.

Pictured top: Steve Langlois.