NWL announces £27.8m increase in turnover

Northumbrian Water Ltd (NWL) has increased its turnover by almost £30m for the year ended March 31 2013, compared with the previous 12 months.

According to NWL’s annual performance report published yesterday, the company increased its turnover to £756.9m from £729.1m in 2012.

NWL, which incorporates Northumbrian Water and Essex & Suffolk Water, said the increase reflected the application of Ofwat’s 2009 price review of 0.9% plus 5.2% RPI on water and sewerage charges.

However, volumes of measured supplies to both household and non-household customers declined, as a result of the “difficult prevailing economic conditions in the UK”.

Operating costs also increased to £427.6m from £410.2m in 2012, which the company said reflected increases in business rates, depreciation, infrastructure renewals and general inflationary pressures.

Despite this, NWL described its performance as “pleasing” and said it had the funding and facilities in place to meet its operational and capital investment requirements for at least the next two years.

Heidi Mottram, chief executive at Northumbrian Water, said: “We have further improved the service we provide to our customers in a number of areas.

“Most notably, our customer experience score and supply interruption performance have both improved significantly. We also continue to have industry-leading sewage treatment performance, a position we have held for a number of years.”

In addition, NWL said its water resources had been resilient, despite a challenging year of dramatic weather extremes, starting with drought conditions in early 2012 followed by severe summer storms and exceptional rainfall levels.

In the past year NWL also became the first UK waste water company to use 100% of its sludge to produce renewable energy, after the opening of its second advanced anaerobic digestion (AAD) plant at Howdon.