By: Kelsey Martin, Severn Trent
Advertorial Feature
Do you have a dripping tap, leaky loo or shower that’s sprung a leak? What people may not realise is that those little leaks could be pushing up the cost of your water bill!
If you’re a business owner and you receive Severn Trent water via your retailer, there are a range of free tools on offer that can help you to find and fix any water leaks you have on your premises. Read on to find out how to how using our Vyn platform or getting a Water Efficiency Check can make sure that you’re only paying for the water you use, and you’re not letting money go down the drain!
Following the slightly soggy summer that we had this year, it’s easy to see why people tend to think of Britain as being a country that gets more than its fair share of rain. But according to the Met Office, we see slightly less rainfall than Paris and about half that of New York.
With a growing population – predicted to be more than 2 million additional people by 2030 – and ongoing pressures from climate change bringing more storms and blistering heat, water is increasingly being seen as a precious resource.
In fact, the government has estimated that we’ll need an additional 4 billion litres of water every day by 2050 and to hit targets and ensure that there is enough water available for everyone who needs it, water companies are being asked to encourage people to bring down the average daily use from 140 litres per person per day, to 110 litres per person per day.
Loads of sectors have already got behind this target, from builders ensuring new offices and commercial properties are water efficient, to white goods manufacturers providing water efficiency ratings on their products.
Businesses are also increasingly turning to products like low-flow shower heads and are considering the ways that they use water, making small changes like upgrading bathrooms at their business by installing push taps and sensored urinals. It all adds up!
But what people may not realise is just how much those leaking taps, toilets and showers could be costing them on their water bill. At Severn Trent we want to make sure that we’re supporting business customers in eliminating wasted water and alongside our commitment to support behaviour change, we also want to help them address leaks.
Customers can access a range of free-of-charge services that we offer. This includes Water Efficiency Checks – where one of our expert engineers visits a business to check for basic leaks, chat through ways in which they could use water more efficiently, and leave them with some free products and advice – and through our Vyn platform.
The easy to use application lets you take a video of a suspected leak on your smartphone which can be uploaded straight to one of our team.
They’ll review the footage and if they think you might have something that we can help with, we’ll be in touch within five working days about next steps. If it’s a fix that we can help with, we’ll send out an engineer to take a look and make a repair there and then if we can, all free-of-charge.
This is particularly useful for businesses like hotels, restaurants and bars which have a higher number of fittings that may be suffering a sneaky leak. Just think that a dripping tap could be putting an extra £90 a year on the average water bill…and then consider how many taps you’ve got on your premises!
As most of our business customers are metered, you’re paying for what you use rather than a flat rate, so all of these little drips and drops can soon add up over the course of six month or a year.
This isn’t just something that we’re asking of our customers though and we know that a big step on this journey is addressing leakage from our network. This is why we’ve recently committed to spend £12.9 billion from 2025-2030, with a significant part of this funding to upgrading over 1,850km of water pipes – the same amount that could stretch from John O’Groats to Lands End twice. This will help to cut leakage from our network by 16% and ensuring a further 100 million litres more every single day gets to where it’s needed most.
Visit stwater.co.uk and search for Supporting Local Businesses to find out more and link through to the Vyn app.