South West Water to refurbish its HQ

South West Water has upset some of its customers, and some of its staff as well we are told, with its announcement that its HQ at Exeter, Peninsula House, is going to be refurbished. Costing some £1.5 million the work is due to start in May with completion at the end of the year. SWW reckon this expenditure will be recouped in a couple of years; I presume this will be down to such matters as more operational efficiency and better use of energy. I think that this will be the first makeover for 20 plus years.

The 1.5 million number is not too dissimilar to the size of the population it serves. In other words it will costing each of us about a pound. Now I'm going to go out on a limb perhaps and say that I don't, in principle, have any problem with this. To be honest I welcome it. Lets look at the benefits: firstly it won't be long before it will start saving the bill payer money, secondly, if it involves energy saving (and I'm sure it must) that will be good for the planet, and last but not least this would be the ideal time to do it because with unemployment escalating such a contract will provide job security for the tradesmen involved for a few months at least.

More than likely the reason that some people are getting irate over the issue is the fact that we have the highest water bills in the country! This is an unrelated problem so far as I am concerned and it's up to the government to do something to reduce the marked differences in prices between different water companies.

I've noticed that people like the BBC display what is to me an annoying habit when running this sort of story. They interview say a couple of people against the scheme and one or two who are pro. What's all that about? Obviously with the huge number of customers that SWW has you can easily get a quick response from both sides but I don't see that somebody just saying "It's disgusting" is moving the argument along, particularly as the interviewee has to comment on the spur of the moment without giving the thing much thought.

On the subject of the cost of our water bills there was an interesting proposal mooted the other day. I think that the water company is going to run an experiment with a few of its customers whereby, using smart metering, there will be a reduced unit cost up to a certain limit. If more water is used then the price per litre will be much higher for this additional usage. In other words the cost of essential water use will be more modest but if you are going to use much more water for washing the car or sprinkling the lawn say then expect your bill to take off. They say that they will take into account the number of people in the metered property which seems reasonable enough: my problem here though is all the extra bureaucracy needed in ascertaining the number of people resident in a house - have they thought this through?

I think that we will see a lot more interest in 'smart metering' be it for water, gas or electricity in the next few years.

Untreated water incident in Devon

Consumers in some 16,000 homes and businesses are still being advised to boil their water as a result of untreated river water getting into the supply system. The area affected is to the immediate east of Plymouth and stretches up onto Lee Moor and includes Ivybridge, Brixton, Yealmpton and the easternmost part of Plympton. Of course the South West Water website gives more detailed information and a map showing the area concerned.

So how could this incident, which we are told occurred at the water treatment works at Houndall last Thursday night, have happened? And has the water company's response been adequate? No doubt some information on the first question will be forthcoming before long but trying to get a definitive answer to the second is a difficult one. For all the advances in technology - the internet, mobile phone texting and the like, there is no way you can guarantee that those people who are potentially affected by a problem such as this will get the message prior to using the water for drinking, cleaning teeth etc. An out of date way of doing things it might seem but there is nothing to beat the good old loudhailer to alert people to a problem but even then it takes time to go round to 16,000 properties. The media will huff and puff about those affected not being in the know sufficiently quickly but logistically it's self evidently quite a nightmare to get the information out. I don't think anyone can imagine 16,000 customers being phoned but is there a system in place whereby schools, old peoples homes and hospitals can be alerted for instance?

What is most worrying is the thought that South West Water's systems still don't seem to be robust enough to prevent a situation like this happening in the first place. There is obviously anger from their customers on this issue bearing in mind the very high cost that we the public are faced with in paying our water bills.

Anger voiced over water bills

Here in Devon and Cornwall South West Water are the company providing us with water and taking away the sewerage. Last week they announced the increase in charges for the upcoming year 2007-2008: these average out at 12.5% for those on meters whilst unmetered households can look forward to forking out an additional 16.1%. The increases have been sanctioned by the water regulator OFWAT. Unsurprisingly there is a lot of anger out there about all this.

I remember when Michael Howard (yes it was he) oversaw the privatisation of water thinking that this was a unique situation compared with all other privatisations. This was because

• Water is the very one thing we need for the continuance of our existence - we can't do without it.
• Water companies enjoy a total monopoly in their business

Like everyone else I want the best possible service at the lowest price for my water and sewerage. So is the company doing better than its public sector predecessor? I have no means of knowing to be honest. But I can see that a private sector operator producing a service we can't do without but with zero competition is less likely to produce the levels of efficiency private firms are famed for.

A story on the front page of today's Western Morning News is about an Early Day Motion sponsored by local Labour MP Linda Gilroy urging the government to intervene over these huge price hikes. Two issues here: Is the increase justified in relation to the work that has to be done (we are totally reliant on ofwat determining this) and should the government intervene to reduce the vast disparity in prices between different parts of the country. Just before the last general election in 2005 the then Conservative leader Michael Howard (yes him again) allowed himself to be questioned on a local phone in programme. I asked him to give a straight answer, yes or no, whether the Conservatives would introduce some sort of subsidy so that our bills could be closer to those elsewhere. His straight answer was "no". He also said that privatisation had been good and helped to keep costs down. That was a surprise! The present Chancellor noticing that there are few Labour votes down here and who has never displayed an interest in the south west is unlikely to be very bothered either. Even less so now with the likelihood of a new job before long.

I see this as a moral problem. Surely we shouldn't be expected to pay so much relative to other parts of the country.

One thing my paper sought to highlight was the current leakage rate as applied to South West Water. They state that the company loses 84 million litres of water a day. Considering the vast mileage of pipework this figure is absolutely meaningless yet the media love quoting figures with plenty of zeroes. Now if we were told how many months it would take to totally empty Roadford reservoir at that rate then one could start getting ones head around such figures. It is very similar to a politician saying they have spent so many millions on the health service say in one year. How can the man in the street possibly relate to that?

My other concern is the way these leakages are calculated. How do they do it? With reservoirs one can say how much water there is in the thing at any one time but how can you be sure how much is leaking from the pipe network particularly when much of the 'useful' water is still unmetered. I do have a very healthy scepticism when it comes to statistics!