Northern Ireland Water has driven down leakage but missed its regulatory target for 2020/21.
The company reported a reduction of 2.8 million litres a day (Ml/day), a decrease from 160.5Ml/day to 157.7Ml/day, which missed its 153Ml/day target for the year.
“This represents an 8 Ml/d reduction, which is positive, but something NI Water are confident we can continue to improve upon. With advances in leakage technology and resources invested in the leakage team we look forward to continuing to drive down leakage,” the company said.
NI Water, which entered a new price control period in April, struggled with its leakage targets throughout the 2015-21 cycle. For the coming six-year period the regulator set NI Water the commitment of achieving sustainable economic level of leakage of 150Ml/day by the end of PC21.
For 2019/20 the company missed its target reduction of 155Ml/day and has subsequently had funding approval for an extra 11 staff to locate and repair leaks within the network. Over the past year, teams have attended an average of 220 leaks in the network each week.
The 1.8 per cent decrease for 2020/21 leaves the organisation with work to do to meet its regulatory obligations for the new asset management period.
The company said leakage is a top priority to minimise water lost across its network of 27,000km of pipes that are mostly in rural locations.
The company’s final determination for PC21 allocated £2.1 billion for capital investment, which is more than double the permitted spending in the previous six years. After underfunding in previous price reviews the company and its infrastructure was unable to keep pace with the growing needs of the country.
In 2020/21 NI Water begun trialling the use of satellite technologies, which use various wavelengths of the visible and invisible light spectrum to locate leaks.