Scottish Water has doubled the number of engineers and technicians to ensure that reducing leakage remains a top priority for the business.

Richard Ackroyd, chief executive of Scottish Water, said: “We are determined to make large and rapid reductions in leakage. We have put in place a team of key engineers and technicians to enable us to double our ability to tackle leakage which is at an unacceptable level in Scotland.”

Over the past two years, we have reduced our reported leakage by 180 million litres of drinking water.

Mr Ackroyd added: “While this achievement is on par with the companies south of the border when they started tackling leakage it is still not good enough. Leakage has become ever more of an issue with climate change, the increasing cost of treating water to the highest standards and ensuring that we deliver better quality drinking water to our customers while increasing efficiency.

“We are well served in Scotland with water to supply all our customers and tackling leakage is part of our drive to become a more sustainable business.

“I was delighted to join this company recently, which has proved to be the fastest improving water company in the UK. I have asked the teams in Scottish Water to repeat those successes of the past six years in tackling leakage robustly. I regret that we fell short of our targets for reducing leakage in the last two years and I want to re-assure our customers that all our efforts are being intensified.”

In 2007/08 Scottish Water’s target was to reduce leakage to 855 million litres per day from 1004 million litres per day. Scottish Water achieved over half of this reduction by reducing reported leakage by 80 million litres per day to 924 million litres per day. This was in addition to reducing reported leakage by 100 million litres per day in the previous year.

Paul Kerr, Scottish Water’s Head of Leakage said: “When we agreed targets in 2006 we were starting from cold. We were reducing leakage as well as installing the measurement equipment which we need across Scotland to identify which parts of the water network were leaking more and where the biggest volumetric reductions would come from.

“We have met the target to install the measurement equipment known as DMAs with over 94% of all properties in Scotland now covered.

“With a clearer picture of leakage through the analysis of the DMA information we have introduced more resources and increased investment to tackle this issue more effectively. We have gone into the market place to get the specialist teams we need to ensure we meet our targets in the future.”

Scottish Water’s main focus is to work towards the Economic Level of Leakage (ELL). This is the level where it is more costly to repair the leak than the cost saving due to the value of the water leaking from the system. By 2010 we aim to reach the halfway point and we are aim to be on target to hit the ELL by 2014.

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