Welsh Water reflects on the calm before, during and after the winter storms
11 April 2022
Welsh Water recorded its most resilient winter yet thanks to the success of its proactive emergency planning and customer campaigning. Whilst the winter of 2021-22 was milder than usual, the company had to contend with a different kind of disruption – storms.
February 2022 saw an unprecedented three storms in one week – Dudley, Eunice, and Franklin – of which included red weather warnings and would have implications for every area of the business. In preparation, Welsh Water took to resource modelling and developing red weather plans at the earliest possible moment, including proactive activities such as topping up its service reservoirs, ensuring the availability of tankers, increasing resource across the business, and switching from mains power to generator electricity at its rural pumping stations in case of power outages from the high winds.
Jonathan Taylor, Senior Business Improvement Manager for Water Distribution said: “Operating a water distribution work is challenging at the best of times but adding winter weather into the mix can cause a host of issues that put a lot of strain on the network and resources.
“We’re really proud of our winter response this year. The resilience shown is testament to good business continuity plans, strong customer messaging and learning from previous events. Our weather forecasting and notification from the Met Office that the storms were coming meant that we needed to plan and respond quickly.
“We’ve learnt a lot over the past decade. The Beast from the East storm in 2018 resulted in the biggest wintry weather challenge that we had ever experienced. Low temperatures, heavy rain and snowfall meant high numbers of burst mains and around 2,500 incidents of loss of water supply and a major strain on the call centre and network operations. This provided key learnings for our emergency planning resulting in fewer affected customers and keeping our colleagues safe from weather-related incidents or accidents”.
Listen to our latest podcast episode to hear more from Jon here.
When temperatures plummet, the water in pipes and taps can freeze, cutting off water supply and causing pipes to burst. Pipes and taps that are outdoors, or in cold places are the most likely to freeze. This is why each year, the company carries out intense winter planning and campaigning to ensure that colleagues and customers alike are as proactive and prepared for the winter as possible, building on learnings from previous years.
Customers are reminded that whilst winter weather can cause huge problems, there are lots of proactive actions that can be taken well in advance to avoid a catastrophic burst in their home.
Latest figures from Go Compare, the insurance comparison site, reveal that between January and August 2021, of the people who ran a home insurance quote via GoCompare and declared they had a claim, 25% of those claims were for escape of water.
- Locate your stop tap – you'll need to get to it quickly and turn it off, should the worst happen.
- If you have pipes and taps that are outdoors, or in a cold place like a loft or garage, wrap them with insulation or a lagging kit. We still have a limited stock of lagging kits available here.
- Dripping taps can increase the risk of frozen pipes, so make sure to get them fixed.
- Empty buildings are at particular risk. If you’re leaving your home or business, turn off your stop tap and drain down the system so there is no water in the system to freeze.