Our action plan to improve performance
Despite a significant increase in recent investment, the legacy of severe asset deficit and the fragility of our infrastructure were exposed in 2022-23.
We expect to only deliver around half of our performance commitments in 2022/23. We recognise that our performance is ‘lagging behind’ compared to some of the other water companies within our sector.
During 2022/23 Thames Water invested a record £1.8 billion in our assets, a 60% increase in two years. We also restructured the business to a regional operating model and insourced repair and maintenance of our water network and on shored customer-facing care teams. Despite a significant increase in recent investment, the legacy of severe asset deficit and the fragility of our infrastructure were exposed in 2022/23.
We delivered 55% of our performance commitments in 2022/23 in what was an extremely challenging year for Thames Water and the water industry. Our network came under unprecedented pressure from record temperatures, a drought and a freeze / thaw event. At the same time, economic factors also impacted our financial results with high inflation driven by a surge in energy and chemical prices. In short, our performance was not as we – or our customers – wanted it to be.
Our final performance information for 2022/23 has been published in our annual performance report.
Our targeted action plan to improve performance
Given our performance, we launched a review of our turnaround two and a half months ago to identify what needs to change to deliver better performance, quicker. As a result, we are transitioning to a more focused Turnaround Plan – this targeted approach focuses expenditure on a smaller number of initiatives that will deliver substantial and sustainable improvements in key performance metrics over the next three years.
We are meeting or exceeding our performance targets for Priority Services, unplanned outages, and sewer collapses.
Our targeted action plan below shows areas of our performance we are working on improving. Click on each area for further information.
You can download our annual performance report 2022-23 to see how these performance commitments are measured, as well as a summary of our 2022-23 performance.
Monitoring our progress
We monitor our progress against our turnaround plan at our monthly Executive Business Performance Reviews. Our board also keeps oversight on turnaround progress at our quarterly meetings.