Two of the North鈥檚 three water companies will be allowed to raise bills after hitting incentives set by industry regulator Ofwat.
Yorkshire Water is one of the utility firms today ordered by the regulator to return millions of pounds to customers via lower bills next year after missing key targets in areas like pollution and leaks. In an annual performance report on water firms, Ofwat said customer bills will be slashed in 2025-26 to reflect the penalties, with the total rebates calculated in December. Yorkshire Water鈥檚 拢36m penalty is the third highest in the country.
But elsewhere in the North, the region鈥檚 two other big firms, Northumbrian Water and United Utilities, beat their targets and will be allowed to charge more next year, as part of an incentive scheme. United Utilities will be allowed to add 拢33.2m to its customers鈥 combined bills and Northumbrian Water 拢7.8m.
Yorkshire Water said it had made progress on reducing leakage and on 鈥渉ow our customers perceived us鈥. But a spokesman said: 鈥淯nfortunately, in other areas we did not meet some of our commitments and as a result, our customers will receive an adjustment to our bills from April next year.鈥
He added: 鈥淒espite this, we remain committed to doing right by our customers and delivering more of what they expect. We are in the process of investing almost 拢800m in our infrastructure across the region this year.鈥
A Northumbrian Water spokesman said: 鈥淭he Ofwat company performance report recognises that we are one of only four companies who have delivered an outperformance of our targets for our customers, although the categorisation means that we are scored as 鈥榓verage鈥 alongside 13 other water companies.
鈥淲e are an industry leader for the lowest number of customers affected by internal sewer flooding, something that is incredibly important to us and to our customers, and the report highlighted our good progress around the issue. We鈥檙e pleased to also be one of the top performing companies for Ofwat鈥檚 measure of customer experience and service, demonstrating our commitment to be the very best water company when it comes to serving and supporting our customers.
鈥淲e know there is more to do. The hard work will continue, and we will keep on improving, working hard for our customers, our communities and helping improve our environment.鈥
