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Water Service: Standards

Answer

The Chief Executive of Water Service (Mrs. Katharine Bryan) has been asked to write to the hon. Lady in response to this question.Letter from Mrs. Katharine Bryan, dated 28 March 2007:"You recently asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland a Parliamentary Question about how many water leaks were reported to the Water Service in each of the last three years; and what the average length of time taken to repair water leaks was over the same period (128114). I have been asked to reply as this issue falls within my responsibility as Chief Executive of Water Service.""The number of water leaks reported to Water Service from 2003/04 to 2006/07 is set out below."

	Number of leaks reported
2003-04	¹9,845
2004-05	10,658
2005-06	10,289
2006-07	10,176
¹ The 2003-04 figure is an estimate as the information for that year was not captured in the same format as the other years.

"Water Service logs all reported defects in the public water mains and monitors progress through a Work Management System. Repairs are undertaken by a combination of in-house resources and approved contractors and the times taken to complete repairs are monitored to ensure they comply with set targets. These range from 2 to 7 days, depending on the nature of the defect, and they are normally achieved. Exceptions arise as a result of restrictions imposed by the location and nature of the defect. Unfortunately, Water Service does not specifically record average timescales for repairing reported leaks and the information requested could only be extracted manually at disproportionate cost."

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

458 c1761-2W; 128114

Session

2006-07

Subjects

Northern Ireland Standards Water Service

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk