Mains repairs performance commitment data

What are performance commitments (PCs)?

The water regulator Ofwat sets targets called performance commitments (PCs) to ensure companies deliver the best possible service for customers, society and the environment. Wessex Water has a range of PCs for the 2020-25 period.

Each year we report our results against these commitments, in our Annual Performance Report.

Where appropriate we’re publishing the data underpinning calculation of the PCs – you can find our other PC datasets in the Performance Commitments section.

Mains repairs PC

There are approximately 12,000 km of water mains in the Wessex Water region, which distribute approximately 340 million litres of water each day. Water pipes can burst and need repairs for a number of reasons. These include pipe deterioration due to age or soil conditions, ground movement in dry, hot summers or freezing weather, and compression of soil around pipes by heavy traffic. We have an ongoing programme of water main replacement to limit the number of bursts that occur.

We commonly identify bursts ourselves as part of our network monitoring and leakage detection activity. Repairs to these bursts are classified as ‘proactive’. In other cases, customers contact us to inform us of a leak – repairs to these bursts are classified as ‘reactive’.

The mains repairs PCs reports the number of mains repairs each year on our water main network, both proactive and reactive.

This acts as an indicator of the health of the network. Therefore this PC incentivises us to maintain and improve the health of the below ground water mains network, so that we can provide a consistent service to current and future generations.

Dataset details

The dataset provides information about the mains repairs contributing to our performance commitment, as per Ofwat’s detailed reporting guidance. In short, this means all physical repair work to mains from which water is lost.

This includes repairs that result from the system operating conditions (e.g. a pressure surge) rather than weaknesses in pipe condition.

This excludes:

• repair work that is not completed on the water main itself, but rather an ancillary of the main
• repairs to communication pipes (pipes that carry water from a water main to the boundary of a private property)
• repairs to supply pipes (pipes that carry water from the boundary of a private property into the property itself)
• repair work resulting from third party damage where the costs can potentially be recovered from a third party.

How was this data collated?

When a water main is repaired, operational staff log this in our work management system. To compile our annual reporting to Ofwat, we extract the relevant records into Excel for quality assurance and analysis. This published data set is an extract of this.

Publish frequency

For the remaining years of the 2020-25 period, an additional year of data will be added after the annual reporting period.

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If you have any questions or comments about this data set, please get in touch via opendata@wessexwater.co.uk

This dataset is licensed under CC BY, an open data licence, to make it freely available to other potential customers, stakeholders or interested organisations.

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Supplementary Information

You may also be interested in:
Discover Water’s summary data from across the industry: DiscoverWater (en-GB)