Water is a valuable natural capital asset and at the heart of our business. We strive to improve our own internal water efficiency in addition to promoting sustainable water usage to our customers, stakeholders and members of the public.
Building resilient water resources and improving water quality continues to be a key priority for the 2025–2030 period (AMP8). Our approach reflects increasing regulatory expectations and is aligned with long term environmental strategies, including catchment management, climate adaptation and biodiversity enhancement.
Performance is regulated and reported annually through our Annual Performance Reports, supported by enhanced monitoring and governance. Our approach integrates traditional infrastructure delivery with nature based solutions and catchment management, helping to protect water resources and improve resilience to climate change.
Water policy and targets
We have developed a Group-wide Water Management Policy, with the aim of reducing our own water footprint, enabling us to lead by example in water stewardship. The policy sets out to optimise water efficiency by encouraging employees to demonstrate best practice water-saving behaviours and to ensure that facilities are in place to monitor water consumption, reduce leakages, and enable employees to most efficiently use water. We are also investigating how we can further reduce and recycle water usage where possible throughout our operations.
Our approach to water management is supported by ongoing investment in water quality, resilience and network performance. In 2025/26, we invested £341.3 million in water services, maintaining supplies to approximately 4.4 million customers and delivering around 920 Ml/day of drinking water across our regions.
Performance during the year reflected both continued resilience and the impact of extreme weather conditions. Key outcomes included:
- Strong reservoir storage recovery to 97% by year end following drought conditions
- Continued high water quality performance, with a Compliance Risk Index (CRI) of 0.00 for SES Water, 1.38 for South West Water, and 3.95 for Bristol Water
- Reduction in customer contacts on water quality in the South West to 1.55 per 1,000 population
- Supply interruptions of 2 minutes 58 seconds in SES, maintaining industry-leading performance
- Leakage performance of approximately 23.9 Ml/day in SES, with continued focus on reduction despite challenging weather conditions
Pennon Group remains committed to reducing our own water consumption and supporting customers to reduce theirs.
As a group:
- We conduct Water Audits in customers’ homes to identify inefficiencies and fix internal water losses
- We provide customers with Leakbots to help detect and resolve hidden leaks
- We continue to offer free water saving devices through our GetWaterFit platform
- We conduct Water Efficiency Audits in non households, identifying and repairing leaks
- We provide incentives to retailers to deliver water efficiency schemes with their customers
- We continue to promote water efficiency through targeted customer engagement and behaviour change initiatives
You can find more information on our personal water efficiency initiatives across each of our water businesses websites.
Water use monitoring and measurement
The vast majority of water extracted from the environment is for our customers which we define as indirect use. However, to operate the water network and assets, we use water for cleaning and flushing and additionally consume water within our own offices and facilities.
We continue to improve how we monitor and manage water consumption through enhanced data collection and reporting. Our performance and detailed water use data are reported annually in our ESG Databook here, supporting transparency and continuous improvement.
Water stress
Water stress refers to the ability or lack of, to meet the human and ecological demand for water (GRI 20181). The ratio of total annual water withdrawal to total available annual renewable water supply (i.e., baseline water stress) is high (40-80%) or extremely high (>80%) (WRI2). According to this definition
- South West Water and Bristol Water abstraction sources are not located in areas classified as water stressed
- In 2025/26, across SES Water 82.1% of total abstracted water was sourced from areas classified as water-stressed.
Our approach includes long-term planning, demand reduction and catchment-based interventions to ensure sustainable water resource management across all regions.
1GRI 303: WATER AND EFFLUENTS 2018 https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/
2World Resources Institute, Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, www.wri.org/our-work/project/aqueduct/