YORKSHIRE Water is losing 300 megalitres of water a day from its pipes at a time when the dry summer and autumn has led to water levels in its reservoirs dropping.

The figure equates to 300 million litres or 300,000 cubic metres which is enough to fill 100 Olympic swimming pools.

If a householder used that amount of water in a day they could be charged £404,400 - £147,606,000 in a year.

The Bradford-based company has set itself the target of cutting its leakage rates by 40% by 2025, well ahead of watchdog Ofwat’s figure of 15%.

A Yorkshire Water spokesperson said: “During the heatwave this summer, we saw demand for water increase by up to 200 million litres per day, which is more than the daily demand of a city the size of Leeds. The weather has also been unusually dry, with some areas of Yorkshire seeing the driest period on record through the summer and autumn.

"This has meant that not only have we needed to take more water from our reservoirs to meet demand, but there also hasn’t been the rainfall to replenish stocks.

“We are managing resources by moving water around the region using our unique grid system and this year we will spend £75m this year on preventing and fixing leaks. The summer’s hot, dry weather has led to a 20% increase in bursts due to ground drying out causing earth movement and we currently have as many teams out fixing bursts as we did during the ‘beast from the east’.

"We have set ourselves a target of reducing leakage by 40% by 2025. To help us achieve this we have brought in an extra 200 leakage inspectors and to detect bursts quicker, we’ve installed 4,600 acoustic loggers across the network and are going to fit over 30,000 more while we have also successfully trialled the use of drones and satellites.”

The leakage rate was revealed in performance commitment table information which was released as part of Yorkshire Water’s first set of data under its Openness Charter as it looks to make more information about its operations easily accessible to customers.

The firm announced earlier this year that it would be a completely open data company by 2020 and after consulting with customers created an Openness Charter Report.

Richard Emmott, director of communication at Yorkshire Water, said: “As a provider of essential public services, our customers have a right to know how we are performing and what could be more important that for them than to be able to check the quality of drinking water which they use and enjoy every day."

Yorkshire Water has published up-to-date data summary which can now be viewed on its website at www.yorkshirewater.com/opennesscharter while customers can use its Water Quality Lookup Tool to find out what the water quality from their tap is like at https://www.yorkshirewater.com/waterquality.