Sheffield falls victim to Yorkshire Water’s shoddy infrastructure maintenance

Yesterday, 14 October, the city of Sheffield received a first-hand demonstration of the consequences of Yorkshire Water’s repeated failures to maintain its infrastructure. A burst pipe in the city centre caused the closure of three major roads, with fountains of water reportedly reaching 6 feet high.

The entirety of Yorkshire is currently under a hosepipe ban, which is set to last until winter. Months of dry weather have depleted reservoirs, which need time to recharge. Yorkshire Water loses some 21% of its water supply to leaks, while the national average loss is 19%.

Oh, and meanwhile, Yorkshire Water is under investigation for slipping its CEO a hefty £1.3m in bonuses.

‘Serious failures’

Customers across seven postcodes in Sheffield lost their water supply for several hours yesterday evening. Then, today, a series of smaller bursts hit the rest of the city as a knock-on effect.

Unfortunately, this kind of screw-up is par for the course with Yorkshire Water. Back in March, water regulator Ofwat ordered the company to pay a whopping £40m in fines relating to illegal wastewater and sewage dumping.

An Ofwat investigation found that Yorkshire Water spent an average of 7 hours a day dumping untreated wastewater straight into the county’s rivers. Likewise, almost half of the company’s storm overflows didn’t mean basic regulatory standards.

At the time, Lynn Parker – Ofwat’s senior enforcement director – said:

Our investigation has found serious failures in how Yorkshire Water has operated and maintained its sewage works and networks, which has resulted in excessive spills from storm overflows…

If they don’t put in place the improvements that they have said they will, then we will step in and take action.

Ofwat ordered the water supplier to pay £36.6m between 2025 and 30. It added that Yorkshire Water should prioritise the shoddiest storm overflows in environmentally sensitive areas, making sure they spill fewer than 20 times a year.

The company was also ordered to give £3.4m directly to the Great Yorkshire Rivers Partnership. This would be used to undo some of Yorkshire Water’s damage by improving water quality and biodiversity.

Yorkshire Water’s chief executive, Nicola Shaw, said:

We know there’s still more for us to do.

We apologise for our past mistakes and hope this redress package goes some way to show our commitment to improving the environment.

A £1.3m ‘reward for failure’

However, Shaw appeared to get over her contrition rather quickly. In August, the Guardian revealed that Yorkshire Water’s Jersey-registered parent company, Kelda Holdings, paid her an extra £1.3m since 2023. Worse still, the regulated subsidiary – Yorkshire Water Services – didn’t bother to declare these fees fully in its annual report.

It is absolutely unacceptable the chief executive of Yorkshire Water received two additional undisclosed payments of over £650,000 each on top of her annual pay of £689,000.

This comes at a time when customers face a 41% increase in bills, sewage is pouring into rivers and more and more of us are having to put up with pipes bursting and delays on our roads.

What residents get so frustrated about is when they see Yorkshire Water coming out and often doing the very quick and immediate work to stop water pouring out of the broken pipe, but then leave the hole in the road for up to a week afterwards and fail to get it backfilled and the road surface restored quickly.

I put this to directly to the chief executive who has admitted they don’t have enough contractors on their books to be able do this work. It is not good enough.

Hunt made his comment back in September, and accused Shaw of being “rewarded for failure”. However, as yesterday’s major burst in Sheffield goes to show, any complaint about Yorkshire Water might as well be timeless, for all the good it does.

Featured image via the Canary