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Severn Trent spent more than £1bn in last year on capital delivery

Severn Trent spent £1.2 billion in the 12 months to 31 March 2024, in which has it delivered its largest capital programme to date. This amounted to 40% of its capital programme for the asset management period (AMP7).

Its PR19 plan outlined £6.6 billion of total expenditure. For the five years to 2030, it has proposed doubling this to £12.9 billion.

The company earned a net reward for outcome delivery incentives of £55 million for the year, and cumulatively £420 million during AMP7.

Over the year, Severn Trent said its focus on river water quality has put it on track to reduce its share of reasons for not achieving good status (RNAGs) to below 10% by the end of the year. Its share of RNAGs are currently at 14%. Other contributing factors include industry, agriculture, and highways polluting waterways.

This left the company “highly confident” of keeping its 4* rating from environmental regulator the Environment Agency.

Chief executive Liv Garfield said: “We have achieved our best ever leakage performance and we’re very confident of keeping the highest 4* status from the Environment Agency for an unprecedented fifth consecutive year.

“We’re also driving innovation across our sector, with new technology at our Strongford treatment works eliminating all of the site’s carbon emissions.”

At the end of September 2023, just ahead of PR24 plans being published, the company raised £1 billion from investors to transform its network, reduce spills, improve river health and customer service.

Last week it announced storm overflow discharge reduction work at 900 locations, which together with other work will deliver a reduction of 20% of spills per year, Garfield said.

“We are planning record levels of investment in the coming years, while also keeping bills the second lowest in the country. Our customers and the communities in which they live are at the heart of our business and we’re doing more than ever to ensure we have a positive economic, environmental and social impact across our region.”

It began onboarding customers to the Kraken platform, which it adopted in October 2023, and has added 20,000 householders to the system.