United Utilities Group PLC is the UK’s largest listed water business. The group owns and manages the regulated water and wastewater network in the North West of England, through its subsidiary United Utilities Water PLC (UUW), which is responsible for most of the group’s assets and profit.
Key facts
- 100 water treatment works
- Over 42,000 kilometres of water pipes
- 57,000 hectares of catchment land
- 575 wastewater treatment works
- Over 43,000 kilometres of sewers
- Serving a population of seven million people
Water and wastewater operations
UUW holds licences to provide water and wastewater services to a population of approximately seven million people in the North West of England. UUW supplies almost 2,000 million litres of water every day to approximately 3.2 million homes and businesses. Water is collected from catchment land and other sources and stored in reservoirs before being treated and then delivered via a network of pipes to homes and industry. A large proportion of the water supplied flows freely by gravity and does not need to be pumped.
Wastewater is collected using a network of sewers and treated before being returned safely to the environment. A by-product of the treatment of wastewater is sewage sludge, which is treated further to produce an end product suitable for recycling.
UUW’s water and wastewater service currently costs households approximately £1 per day on average. Over the next five years, the average annual household bill will fall by £9 in real terms. We believe this represents excellent value for money, providing customers with high quality drinking water to meet all their daily needs and for environmentally responsible wastewater collection and treatment.
Since privatisation in 1990:
- Water quality in the North West has improved from 99.6% to 99.9%.
- Compliance with bathing water standards across the North West has risen from just over 30% per cent to more than 90%.
- Leakage from the network has halved, supported by ongoing investment in replacing ageing water pipes.
- UUW has invested more than £4,000 for every household in the North West, some £750 above the national average.
In the 2005-10 period, UUW invested more than £3 billion to improve the water and wastewater infrastructure and the environment across the North West. Further developments in the regulatory regime are expected to take effect in the next few years, in particular as a result of European Union environmental initiatives (including the Water Framework Directive and the revised Drinking Water Directive).
Consistent with the group’s approach to longer-term planning, UUW’s water resources management plan, published in September 2009, considers the water supply/demand balance in the North West of England, including the potential impacts of climate change out to 2035.
UUW’s Strategic Direction Statement, which was updated in April 2010, sets out the company’s plans for the new price review period (2010-15) in a longer-term context. The key elements identified in the strategic direction statement are:
- responsible stewardship of water and wastewater networks
- listening to customers and other stakeholders
- ensuring water resources are more sustainable and resilient
- an integrated approach to drainage to reduce the threat of flooding
- reducing significantly the carbon impact of activities
- bills to rise, on average, no faster than incomes
Find out more about our business strategy.