Water company misses quality target

Northern Ireland Water failed to meet its targets on drinking water quality and the number of pollution incidents last year, its first annual report revealed today.

It was also below par in failing to hit its target for answering written complaints from consumers.

Overall the company said it had met only 12 of 21 key targets set for its first full year as a government owned company.

It still lost a massive 156.52 million litres of water a day through leaky pipes and other faults – but that was marked down as a success as the target had been to reduce loss to 157 million litres a day. It was also well down on the 168.06 million litres lost in the previous year.

The target of providing clean drinking water 99.44% of the time was missed - and at 99.30% was worse than the figure for 2006.

It also fell way short of its target of limiting pollution incidents to 46 during the year – the total end up at 60.

Nevertheless the company celebrated its successes in the beginning of the modernisation of the infrastructure and boosting customer service and increasing efficiency.

It highlighted £252m (€317.9m) in capital expenditure and paying a £34m (€42.9m) dividend to the Department for Regional Development.

Overall the company had a turnover of £297.7m (€375.6m) and an operating profit of £63.9m (€80.6m).

The profit after tax was £41m (€51.7m) of which it paid a £34m (€42.9m) dividend to the DRD and retained the remaining £7m (€8.8m).

Chairman and chief executive Chris Mellor said: “While we have made significant progress in a very short space of time we are conscious of the high levels of public interest in our service and the need to deliver a modern and efficient utility.

“This will be achieved by making further improvements to our infrastructure , cutting our costs and placing customer service at the centre of everything we do.”

Commenting on the meeting of only 12 of the 21 key targets he said: “In those where we did not reach the target we have already made significant progress towards addressing the underlying problems.”

Mr Mellor said in their first year they had responded to a number of significant challenges.

“We are aware that as we seek to replace an infrastructure that is more than 100 year old in places and build a modern and efficient service, we are also likely to face many more challenges.

“Acting as one team and in consultation with our key stakeholders, NI Water will remain focussed on its core objective – delivering reliable and cost effective water and wastewater services to all of Northern Ireland.”