Leakage performance

More than any other region, water makes the North West 

We know water is much more than just what comes out of our taps – it’s the North West’s most precious resource. Every day, we provide water to over 3 million households and businesses across the region, delivering 1.8 billion litres through our taps, as well as treating all the wastewater that comes back. 

It makes the North West greener, healthier and stronger – creating great jobs and opportunities, boosting our communities and ecosystems, making our countryside breath-taking.

We are custodians 

We’re taking care of the region’s most precious resource so that it’s safe now and for future generations, ensuring there is enough to supply businesses, communities and customers whilst all the while protecting the environment. 

That’s a big responsibility, and we’re doing everything we can to retain it, preventing leaks and losses. Here are some key facts outlining our aims and progress to date:

• Our aim is to reduce leakage by 15% by 2025 and by 50% by 2050
• We fix around 32,000 leaks every year, saving the equivalent of 17 Olympic sized swimming pools per week
• 20% of the water we supply each day is lost through leakage on our network, around 8% leaks from customers’ own supply pipes and inside the home
• We’ve installed over 72,000 sensors on our pipe network so we can find and fix leaks before they impact customers’ supplies
• We’ve carried out 20,000 home water audits to help customers save water and spot leaks. Where we have given advice and found and fixed a leak, water consumption has reduced by 34%

Why do water pipes leak?

We expect a lot from our water pipes and they have a tough job.  Pressurised water is incredibly forceful, and it will find its way out of a pipe with even the tiniest crack or loose joint. There are 42,000km of water pipes in the North West, enough to wrap around the world, with hundreds of thousands of joints.

The pipes are buried underground, where they are subjected to ground movement or traffic vibrations. When pipes leak, the water often soaks away below ground and doesn’t come to the surface. So it’s a full time job to find and fix leaks, and we’re on it day in day out.

Doing better

For many years, there was a consensus to set leakage targets in water company investment plans to meet a sustainable economic level of leakage. This approach sought to achieve a balance between the cost of finding and fixing leaks and the cost of producing the lost water.

More recently, customers and other industry stakeholders have told us that we should move beyond economic arguments. With the impact of climate change on water resources and the advent of new technology, they told us we must do more.

We agree.

That is why we have set a short term target to reduce leakage by 15% by 2025 and by 50% by 2050, a step change in performance.

What is the current level of leakage?

Reporting leakage is a complex matter. We know how much water is produced by our treatment works, and we know how much water arrives at each local zone in our water pipe network. We also know how much water is used by the properties that have a water meter and we can estimate how much water is used by the households that don’t have a water meter.

By using these figures we calculate how much water is lost at each stage of the journey from the treatment works to the tap. This can be broken down into three elements:

• Leakage from United Utilities’ network of pipes
• Leakage from the customer supply pipe that generally runs from the stop tap into the house
• Losses inside a property such as from leaking toilets

Currently around 20% of the water we supply each day through our network is lost through leakage. Around 8% is lost from customers’ own supply pipes and inside the home. 

Some of the water that’s currently calculated as leakage is actually being used. This can happen when people move into a property but don’t tell us so that we can’t bill them, or when the fire service connects to a fire hydrant to put out fires.

What are we doing about it?

How are we getting on?

Since the 1990’s we have reduced leakage by a third and have met or out-performed our leakage target for the last 17 years (2023). 

By 2025, we plan to reduce leakage by a further 15%, based on a 2018 baseline. We are making good progress and are already over halfway there, having achieved an 8% reduction by March 2022.

We are working towards a 50% leakage reduction by 2050.

What next? 

We know we have more to do as reducing leakage remains a priority for customers. We continue to innovate and work closely with partners to reduce leakage and strive to deliver a great service to customers across the North West. Through careful planning, better use of data and new ways of working, we will meet our short and long term targets.