Severn Trent aims to communicate better this winter

After being criticised for its shortcomings during the Beast from the East, Severn Trent is urging customers to sign up to its text alert service to “personally update” customers this winter.

The water company wants customers to provide their mobile number as part of a drive to ensure customers are kept up to date about issues such as pipe bursts and leaks during the cold winter period.

Jodie Bowen, customer contact lead at Severn Trent, said: “Signing up to our text messaging service means that customers don’t have to worry about checking our website during an emergency, or call into our customer service team. Instead, the updates can come directly through to their mobiles via text message.

“It’s a service which is all about communicating with our customers quickly and effectively. It provides them with the latest information if our engineers are fixing their water supply, and with a cold winter ahead, we’re urging as many customers as possible to sign up.”

Ofwat named Severn Trent as one of four companies which had “fallen well short” on their forward planning to ensure the adverse weather earlier this year did not impact water supplies.

Rachel Fletcher, the regulator’s chief executive said the situation was “deeply distressing” for customers.

Severn Trent, along with Thames Water, South East Water and Southern Water all had to submit externally audited detailed action plans to show how they will be better prepared in future extreme cold weather scenarios.

When the company submitted its plan to the regulator on the 28 September, a spokesperson said: “By putting in place the actions we’ve highlighted in our report we’re confident we’ll reduce the likelihood of future weather-related events becoming incidents, and be better prepared for, and equipped to deal with, those that do.

“We’ve already been encouraged by the positive impact of the actions we’ve already implemented, as seen by our response to the extremely hot summer this year.

“We now need to implement the remaining actions and ensure they become fully embedded within Severn Trent and our ways of working. In doing so, we’ll provide our customers and stakeholders with full confidence in our ability to respond to future challenging situations.”

Customers of Severn Trent across the midlands were affected by the “huge increase in bursts” caused by the sudden thaw after the Beast from the East.

The water company agreed to pay compensation of £30 to any customers who were without water for more than 12 continuous hours, or for more than 15 hours of intermittent supply.

Sarah Bentley, chief customer officer at Severn Trent apologised to customers at the time of the disruption.

Widespread disruption to the water network across the UK in the aftermath of the freeze/thaw in March left more than 200,000 people without water for up to four days.

Ofwat’s “Out in the Cold” review, published on 19 June, painted a mixed picture of company performance. It found some companies responded well and protected customers but others fell short with their advance planning, response and communication with customers.

Severn Trent said it has structured its plans to improve its operational resilience around “Ofwat’s helpful ‘avoid, cope, recover’ framework”.