Company type | Private company |
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Industry | Water industry |
Founded | 1973 |
Headquarters | Bath, Somerset |
Key people |
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Products | |
Production output |
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Services | Water supply and sewerage services |
Revenue |
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Number of employees | 2,547 |
Parent | YTL Corporation, of Malaysia |
Website | www |
Wessex Water Services Limited, known as Wessex Water, is a water supply and sewerage utility company serving an area of South West England, covering 10,000 square kilometres including Bristol, most of Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire and parts of Gloucestershire and Hampshire. [1] Wessex Water supplies 1.3 million people with around 285 million litres of water a day.
It is regulated under the Water Industry Act 1991. In 2016, the company had about 2,100 employees. [2]
Wessex Water is owned by the Malaysian power company YTL Corporation. [3] Its headquarters are on the outskirts of Bath in Claverton Down, in a modern energy-efficient building by Bennetts Associates and Buro Happold. [4]
The company originated as the Wessex Water Authority, one of ten regional water authorities established by the Water Act 1973 which were privatised in 1989. Wessex Water Services Limited was purchased by American company Enron in 1998 for $2.4 billion and placed in a newly formed subsidiary, Azurix. Following Enron's collapse, Wessex Water was sold to YTL Power International of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2002.
The water authority had acquired the assets and duties of a number of public sector and local authority water utilities:
Four people, three of them Wessex Water employees, were killed in an explosion at a company site in Avonmouth on 3 December 2020. [5]
Wessex Water achieved a score of 4.53 in Ofwat's ‘Satisfaction by company’ survey 2012/13 (5 being ‘very satisfied’). [6]
In 2013 Wessex Water's compliance with drinking water standards exceeded 99.9% and the company maintained 100% compliance with sewage treatment discharge consents. [7]
In both 2011/12 and 2012/13 the company's leakage figure was 69 million litres per day, compared to a yearly average of 73 million litres per day between 2005 and 2010. [7]
Wessex Water's greenhouse gas emissions totalled 119 kilotonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2018/19, [8] compared to 149 kilotonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2011/12 and 159 kilotonnes in 2012/13.
The company owns and manages several reservoirs including Blashford Lakes in Hampshire, Clatworthy Reservoir, Durleigh Reservoir, Hawkridge Reservoir, Otterhead Lakes, Sutton Bingham Reservoir and Tucking Mill in Somerset, many of which, in addition to supplying drinking water, are used for recreation and as nature reserves. [9]
Wessex Water's GENeco subsidiary, established in 2009, [10] operates sewage treatment works. It recycles waste, produces renewable energy and provides the agricultural industry with fertiliser. [11] In summer 2010, GENeco launched the Bio-Bug, a modified VW Beetle that runs on bio-gas generated from waste treated at sewage treatment works. [12] Waste flushed down the toilets of just 70 homes in Bristol is enough to power the Bio-Bug for a year, based on an annual mileage of 10,000 miles. [13]
In November 2014, the UK's first bus powered entirely by human and food waste went into service between Bristol and Bath, run by tour operator Bath Bus Company. [14] Since 2019, biomethane powers buses on one of Bristol's MetroBus routes. [15] The gas is produced at the company's "bioresources and renewable energy park" in Avonmouth, which is run by GENeco. [16]
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It borders Gloucestershire to the north, Oxfordshire to the north-east, Berkshire to the east, Hampshire to the south-east, Dorset to the south, and Somerset to the west. The largest settlement is Swindon, and Trowbridge is the county town.
South West England, or the South West of England, is one of the nine official regions of England in the United Kingdom. It consists of the counties of Cornwall, Dorset, Devon, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire. Cities and large towns in the region include Bath, Bristol, Bournemouth, Cheltenham, Exeter, Gloucester, Plymouth and Swindon. It is geographically the largest of the nine regions of England with a land area of 9,203 square miles (23,836 km2), but the third-least populous, with an estimated 5,764,881 residents in 2022.
The River Avon is a river in the southwest of England. To distinguish it from a number of other rivers of the same name, it is often called the Bristol Avon. The name 'Avon' is loaned from an ancestor of the Welsh word afon, meaning 'river'.
Avonmouth is a port and outer suburb of Bristol, England, on the north bank of the mouth of the River Avon and the eastern shore of the Severn Estuary. Part of the Port of Bristol, Avonmouth Docks is important to the region's maritime economy, hosting large vessels for the unloading and exporting of heavier goods. Much of the land use is industrial, including warehousing, light industry, electrical power and sanitation. The M5 motorway bisects the neighbourhood, with junctions onto the A4 road and M49 motorway, and it has stations on the Severn Beach Line railway.
Sewage disposal regulation and administration describes the governance of sewage treatment and disposal.
Anglian Water Services Limited is a water company that operates in the East of England. It was formed in 1989 under the partial privatisation of the water industry. It provides water supply, sewerage and sewage treatment to the area formerly the responsibility of the Anglian Water Authority. The remaining functions of the authority were transferred to the Environment Agency. Anglian Water is regulated under the United Kingdom Water Industry Act 1991.
Yorkshire Water is a British water supply and treatment utility company servicing West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, the East Riding of Yorkshire, part of North Lincolnshire, most of North Yorkshire and part of Derbyshire, in England. The company has its origins in the Yorkshire Water Authority, one of ten regional water authorities created by the Water Act 1973, and privatised under the terms of the Water Act 1989, when Yorkshire Water plc, the parent company of the Yorkshire Water business, was floated on the London Stock Exchange. The parent company was Kelda Group in 1999. In February 2008, Kelda Group was bought by a consortium of infrastructure funds.
Thames Water Utilities Ltd, trading as Thames Water, is a British private utility company responsible for the water supply and waste water treatment in most of Greater London, Luton, the Thames Valley, Surrey, Gloucestershire, north Wiltshire, far west Kent, and some other parts of England; like other water companies, it has a monopoly in the regions it serves.
Southern Water is the private utility company responsible for the public wastewater collection and treatment in Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, West Sussex, East Sussex and Kent, and for the public water supply and distribution in approximately half of this area. Some areas within the Southern Water region are supplied by a number of smaller water supply companies. Southern Water supplies an area totalling 4,450 sq. km. and serves 2.26 million customers.
Bradford-on-Avon railway station is a railway station on the Wessex Main Line in between Avoncliff and Trowbridge, serving the town of Bradford on Avon, in Wiltshire, England. The station is 9 miles 35 chains (15.2 km) south east of Bath Spa. The station was originally conceived by the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway, but was not built until after the company was purchased by the Great Western Railway in 1850 and did not open until 1857.
The majority of public transport users in the Bristol Urban Area are transported by bus, although rail has experienced growth and does play an important part, particularly in peak hours.
YTL Power International Berhad is a subsidiary of YTL Corporation Berhad, one of the largest companies listed on Bursa Malaysia. As of June 2024, the total combined group market capitalisation is RM 103.65 billion. Furthermore, YTL Corp and YTL Power were listed in the Fortune Southeast Asia 500 for the year 2024, ranking 47th and 78th, respectively. The ranking of the 500 Largest Companies in Southeast Asia is based on the revenue for the fiscal year 2023. As of November 2023, YTL Corp and YTL Power are included as constituents of the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI index.
The Bristol and North Somerset Railway was a railway line in the West of England that connected Bristol with Radstock, through Pensford and further into northern Somerset, to allow access to the Somerset Coalfield. The line ran almost due south from Bristol and was 16 miles (26 km) long.
The Mangotsfield and Bath branch line was a railway line opened by the Midland Railway Company in 1869 to connect Bath to its network at Mangotsfield, on its line between Bristol and Birmingham. It was usually referred to as "the Bath branch" of the Midland Railway.
The earliest known infrastructure for transport in Somerset is a series of wooden trackways laid across the Somerset Levels, an area of low-lying marshy ground. To the west of this district lies the Bristol Channel, while the other boundaries of the county of Somerset are along chains of hills that were once exploited for their mineral deposits. These natural features have all influenced the evolution of the transport network. Roads and railways either followed the hills, or needed causeways to cross the Levels. Harbours were developed, rivers improved, and linked to sources of traffic by canals. Railways were constructed throughout the area, influenced by the needs of the city of Bristol, which lies just to the north of Somerset, and to link the ports of the far south-west with the rest of England.
A regional water authority, commonly known as a water board, was one of a group of public bodies that came into existence in England and Wales in April 1974, as a result of the Water Act 1973 coming into force. This brought together in ten regional units a diverse range of bodies involved in water treatment and supply, sewage disposal, land drainage, river pollution and fisheries. They lasted until 1989, when the water industry was privatised and the water supply and sewerage and sewage disposal parts became companies and the regulatory arm formed the National Rivers Authority. Regional water authorities were also part of the Scottish water industry when three bodies covering the North, West and East of Scotland were created in 1996, to take over responsibilities for water supply and sewage treatment from the regional councils, but they only lasted until 2002, when they were replaced by the publicly owned Scottish Water.
Wessex Bus was a bus operator in the West of England that operated from June 2007 until September 2018.
The Bath Bus Company is a bus operator in the United Kingdom which runs open top tours in Bath, Bristol and Cardiff, and the 'Bristol Air Decker' service between Bath and Bristol Airport. The company has been a subsidiary of the French RATP Group since 2011.
Bio-Bus is the UK's first bus powered entirely by human faeces and food waste.
On 3 December 2020, at about 11:20 GMT, a silo containing biosolids exploded in Avonmouth, Bristol, UK, killing four men, including a 16-year old apprentice, and injuring another person. Avon and Somerset Police declared a major incident, and a doctor and specialist paramedic in critical care from the nearby Great Western Air Ambulance headquarters attended the incident by both their rapid response car and emergency helicopter.