Companies beat Beast performance in Christmas freeze-thaw

Water companies handled the December 2022 freeze-thaw event better than the 2018 Beast from the East but require further improvements in their planning, resourcing and response to this type of weather-related loss of supply event.

That was the conclusion of the Drinking Water Inspectorate’s review of the December incident which involved a widespread loss of supply and provision of bottled water at eight English water companies. There was one exception; the DWI did it was considering enforcement proceedings with one firm.

More widely, the watchdog made a series of recommendations to the industry, including to: have an comprehensive and adaptive communications plan in place; to empower an incident team to act as an adverse weather event is entered; and to increase storage in treated water reservoirs as well as leakage repair activity prior to a forecast event.

It also made some additional suggestions, including that proactive bottled water deliveries are carried out to priority service register customers before supply is lost, and that companies include in their plans any locations of pressure valves that can be controlled remotely to reduce demand in the network.