Sunderland City Council joined Wave through the NEPO framework in 2021. The council provide the majority of local government services in Sunderland and has a diverse property portfolio including operational buildings such as offices, depots, schools, other educational properties, and care facilities. The council contacted us about the water usage on their allotment sites, and asked for LimpetReaders to be installed to help them monitor their water consumption.
The right fit
The council has multiple sites that use varying levels of water, but their allotments aren’t large users, so they wouldn’t have benefitted from the installation of Automatic Meter Readers (AMRs). However, Wave offer LimpetReaders as an alternative for smaller customers or sites that use less water, so they can still keep an eye on consumption and identify any issues quickly. We advise our customers not to spend more than 10% of their annual water bill on data collection devices, so LimpetReaders were the obvious choice for the council.
As well as the potential monetary savings, spotting and fixing issues such as leaks as soon as possible also benefits the environment and saves water in a time when it’s a precious resource.
A speedy process
Located in the Northumbrian Water region, Sunderland City Council were able to benefit from a quick installation process. Following a procurement process, it took less than a month for us to get 22 LimpetReaders in place, allowing the council to get back to focusing on competing priorities, because time consuming site visits and manual meter readings were no longer required.
Accuracy is key
The council will receive daily reads for each site, giving them more accurate bills and allowing them to access their consumption data and monitor any trends or increases in usage in My Account. If a leak is spotted it can be resolved quickly and efficiently, which will help keep costs down.
As a result of this work, five LimpetReaders couldn’t be installed straight away as our team identified suspected leaks on some of the supplies. These suspected leaks could have easily gone unnoticed and ended up costing the council money. Now that they’ve been reported, consumption should go down and water bills will be accurate and less costly.
Cllr Claire Rowntree, Deputy Leader, Sunderland City Council, said: “We were delighted with the smooth and very quick process to have our meters fitted with the Limpet devices. The majority of devices were fitted over 2 days and something that really stood out to me was that the technician spotted some meters were leaking and was diligent enough to report those to Wave, who was able to alert the wholesaler.”
Claire Bisset, Public Sector Account Manager for Wave, said: “It’s great to see Sunderland City Council taking such care to monitor their water usage at their sites. We are now able to use these devices to fully monitor water use and alert them to any increase in consumption. What I also love about these is billing accuracy is improved as we use a read each month for billing purposes.”
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