It’s one thing purchasing the best quality water softener Aylesbury has to offer to ensure your water isn’t hard, but when a water company continually fails to contain leaks and then raises bills for its customers, it’s clear to see how consumers can very quickly get angry.

Thames Water, one of the UK’s biggest suppliers, unveiled its financial results this year with a side note that it had not managed to meet targets for leakage reductions, and as such, was offering compensation to over five million households, according to The Guardian.

This comes in the form of cuts to proposed tariff increases, meaning that the average water bill will increase by £8 less than originally expected.

Outgoing chairman, Sir Peter Mason, explained why the firm had chosen to pay back penalties to customers sooner than expected – three years earlier than required: “Our leakage performance over the last year has let down our customers and stakeholders and we’re working hard to improve our performance,” he said.

Thames Water has promised to invest heavily in reducing leaks going forward, after a series of serious bursts over the last few years. One such, in Bromley, London last year, left many homes without water during a July heatwave.

The firm has suspended dividends for investors to ensure money is funnelled to where it is urgently needed to meet their leakage targets by 2020. According to the chief executive Steven Robertson, £533 million has been spent on infrastructure in the six months ending in September.