Northumbria Police receive refunds and savings of over £41,000 from Water Company
Northumbria Police serves a population of 1.5 million people and covers an area of more than 2,000 square miles in the North East of England, operating from sites from the Scottish border down to County Durham and from the Pennines across to the North East coast.
As part of the force's Carbon Management Plan, Water Management Solutions UK Ltd (WMS) was asked to deliver its Water Management Programme across their estate. The programme has two distinct phases:
Phase 1 – cost and consumption analysis, followed by cost recovery, on a share of savings.Phase 2 – full site surveys to investigate high consumption following findings from Phase 1.
In Phase 1, billing analysis initially focused on fixed charges and identified issues at three sites requiring investigation by WMS's engineers and the potential for meter downsizing at 15 other sites.
The site surveys confirmed WMS's suspicions at one site and, following negotiations with Northumbrian Water, led to a gross rebate of £15,000 and on-going annual savings in excess of £2,000. Meter downsizing would have generated annual savings of over £2,200, but payback for such works was beyond the three year target set by the Force's estates team.
Phase 2 was initiated after usage analysis, through site profiling and benchmarking, indicated a potentially high consumption or leakage on four sites. The full site surveys evaluated all water use on each site, clarifying consumption levels and identifying reduction measures, with the findings detailed in reports allowing the estates team to deliver a programme of improvements. For one site, more significantly, a major leak was identified through the infrastructure checks. Once repaired, WMS was able to again negotiate with Northumbrian Water to secure a rebate of more than £24,000.
"The work completed by Water Management Solutions was a valuable part of the water conservation project being completed by Northumbria Police, and it produced significant cost savings".
