Portsmouth Water sets out its AMP7 scorecard

Portsmouth Water has published its Annual Report setting out its performance over the five year period to March 2025. Progress has been made in many areas: 22 targets were met or exceeded compared to eight that came in below.

Portsmouth had the lowest level of supply interruptions in the industry and provided good customer service for households and developers. However the company missed its leakage, per capita consumption, number of water quality contacts and void properties targets. Drought restriction risk remains high; resilience schemes for peak demand were not completed; and half the financial targets were missed: EBITDA coming in at £13.6m against a budget of >£17.9m and a RORE of -1.94% against the target of >6%. The company only exceeded 6% RORE for the first two years of the AMP and incurred an Outcome Delivery Incentive penalty of £958,000 in 2024/2025. High energy and commodity-reacted costs caused it to miss its EBITDA target.

It will pay a £2.9m dividend (£3.2m for the prior year), representing a 4% return on the company’s average RCV. It spent £50.1m on the new Havant Thicket reservoir project in the year out of a predicted total of £339m (at 2021 prices) by 2030. 

Portsmouth received an AMP8 settlement from Ofwat that reflected its efficient base costs. It will also earn a small company financing cost premium, giving it an allowed return of 4.22% compared to the sector return of 4.03%. Havant Thicket will earn a premium of 4.44%. Portsmouth said it will publish its Price Control Deliverables plans in July.