Welcome to Southern Water’s first online Stakeholder Report, which outlines our work to deliver first class water and wastewater services in the South East of England.

 

We continually strive to protect the environment and producing this annual report online is one small way in which we can help our carbon footprint.

 

The 2008-09 year was our most successful in terms of our customer service, operational performance and protecting the environment.

 

For the second year running, our 371 wastewater treatment works achieved a 99.2 per cent pass rate for the quality of wastewater recycled back into the environment, meeting European quality standards, while the number of serious pollutions in our region reached a record low.

 

We continued to maintain the lowest leakage level of all water and wastewater companies in the UK and our drinking water quality remained among the best in Europe.

 

We delivered £271 million worth of improvements to our water and wastewater infrastructure across Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

 

We achieved our best performance in responding to customers who wrote to us about their bills or to complain. We also bettered our regulatory target for answering calls to our billing contact centre.

 

We continued to make customer-focused improvements to our website, which was rated top for usability in an independent survey of utility websites.

 

We work hard to help our carbon footprint and continued to develop our Combined Heat and Power systems, which generate electricity during the wastewater treatment process, while a special team was created to develop more efficient ways to use less energy, chemicals and fuel in our daily operations.

 

We also finalised our business plan, outlining how we propose to deliver services for our customers, protect water resources and make further improvements to our business from 2010 to 2015.

 

Our work during the year was recognised with more than 20 awards celebrating innovation, considerate construction, health and safety, customer service and care for the environment.

 

We were also awarded ISO14001, the international standard for environmental management systems, demonstrating that we are committed to continually improve our environmental performance.