WATER LEAKAGE: This is how the big 9 water & sewerage companies compare

Last month the GMB Union revealed that water companies across England and Wales lost 2.4 billion litres of treated water every single day in 2017.

Stuart Fegan, GMB National Officer, said: “Today’s news from United Utilities will be a relief for millions of customers in the North West.

“But rather than leaving customers praying for rain, United Utilities must now invest and fix their infrastructure which leads to 175 Olympic size swimming pools of treated water being lost each day.

“Unfortunately, past behaviour over the last 29 years suggests that private water companies are more than happy to accept fines from Ofwat rather than make the necessary investment in our water infrastructure to stop leaks.

"The bosses of England's privatised water companies must sit up and take note of the public reaction to hose pipe bans while they make huge profits, pay their CEOs a fortune and have failed to sufficiently invest in our water infrastructure as promised. ”

A United Utilities spokesman said: “While all rain is welcome, we are also working hard behind the scenes pumping more water around the region and tapping into new sources.

"We are investing more than £800m every year in improving infrastructure and service for customers.

"Leakage is one of important areas we continue to invest in and, although leakage rates have been halved since the early 1990s, we know there is more to do and we are planning to drive leakage rates down further over the coming years.”

Here is how the big 9 water & sewerage companies compare(Company leakage per day in litres (000,000s) - 2016-17)

Anglian - 180.0

Northumbrian - 133.8

Severn Trent - 431.6

South West - 84.4

Southern - 88.1

Thames - 677.2

United Utilities - 439.2

Wessex - 68.4

Yorkshire - 295.2

Total leakage from big 9 water & sewerage companies - 2397.9