Stop the Drop: Empowering customers to save water

Water companies must explore new and innovative approaches to customer engagement, now more than ever, writes Laura Flowerdew, chief customer and digital officer at Pennon Group, owner of South West Water. The company launched an incentive scheme for customers in drought-stricken parts of the region. She shares how customers have helped restore drastically low reservoir levels via a reward programme.

As we all know, the past six months have been challenging as large parts of the country were officially placed in drought status. The South West region, for example, has experienced one of the driest and hottest periods for over 130 years. Despite the welcome return of Autumnal weather, the region remains officially in drought.

We are seeing the direct consequences of climate change. Our rain is becoming less consistent. When it does rain, it increasingly arrives in short intensive bursts onto land hardened by long periods with little or no rain, which does not absorb the water as effectively as soft soil.

These unique weather conditions, coupled with unprecedented demand over the summer months, have left our reservoirs and rivers depleted. Storage levels within these reservoirs fell to their lowest ever recorded levels earlier this year. The situation has led to many water companies, including ourselves, introducing temporary use bans (hosepipe bans) to try to reduce customer usage. Our hosepipe ban came into force in August for customers in Cornwall and parts of North Devon and it remains in place.

Planning for the future

While the recent rainfall has helped replenish rivers and reservoirs, the water resources situation needs both short term and long term thinking and we are taking steps now to mitigate the need to bring in restrictions next spring/summer.

I’m proud of the action we have been taking at South West Water. Our colleagues are working around the clock to bring new supplies safely online, find and fix more leaks than ever before and help businesses and customers reduce their water usage. We are planning for the future today, investing in three new reservoirs and finding innovative ways to collect, store and treat water.

But we can’t make lasting change alone. We also need to work with customers, and we have been asking them to reflect on their own activities and how they use water. We have been engaging with customers throughout the period of drought, asking them to save water where they can and encouraging them to take advantage of our water saving freebies and products on our website. We have given away more than 75,000 water-saving devices ranging from water butts to flow-reducing shower heads.

South West Water is investing c.£75 million in water resilience, and accelerating initiatives to secure supplies across Cornwall. This includes investment at our new Hawkstor reservoir, purchased earlier in 2022, alongside work at three other water sources in Cornwall re-purposing ex-quarries and mines, and progressing de-salination solutions. We are also pursuing a new reservoir in the Bristol region – Cheddar 2, which forms part of our longer-term strategy.

Further action

We had positive early results from our customer side actions, showing that the hosepipe ban and other interventions had helped to decrease demand by 10% in the peak months. But it was clear more was needed. Water is scarce and we need to support customers with innovative ways to bring down usage over the long term.

That’s why last month we were excited to launch a brand new customer incentive scheme for Cornwall as part of our ‘Stop the Drop’ campaign. The scheme, which is the first of its kind for our industry, gives customers in Cornwall the opportunity to receive a £30 credit on their bills if Colliford Reservoir – our large strategic reservoir serving 255,000 householders in Cornwall – reaches 30% storage capacity by 31 December 2022. The £30 will be credited to the accounts of all household customers after the incentive ends.

The aim of the campaign was to show that by working together and by customers making small changes, we can start to make a real difference. The plan is to draw on the community spirit of the people of Cornwall to help us by reducing their water usage around the home and in the garden to secure supplies in Colliford Reservoir. For example, our research shows that if everyone in Cornwall cut their shower time by just 1 minute it would save over 4.5 million litres a day.

Throughout the campaign, we continue to share water saving tips and we are encouraging customers to check on reservoir levels on our website.

New approach

We’re excited to see how customers respond to the campaign and we will be tracking the results to explore how schemes such as this could work for us in the future. Thankfully, we are making progress, with Colliford reaching more than 24% capacity within three weeks of launching thanks to the fantastic efforts of our customers and colleagues.

With the undeniable impacts of climate change likely to place new and unforeseen pressures on our operations, I believe it has never been a better time for us as water companies to find new solutions to connect with our customers and to change the way we all think about and value our precious water resources.

‘Stop the Drop’ is the first step for us in our new approach to customer engagement. By working together with our customers and stakeholders we can reduce the risk to water supplies facing the industry, delivering water resilience now and into the future.

Mike Keil, senior director of policy, research and campaigns at CCW, said: “We’ve been impressed with the Stop the Drop initiative which is a great example of a water company being innovative in its thinking when it comes to helping water resources recover.”

“It has brought South West Water closer to the people it serves by encouraging a spirit of shared responsibility when it comes to looking after our water resources, while also providing a financial incentive to customers at a time when many households are struggling with the cost of living.”