Water company Severn Trent has reported a fall in profits as it counts the cost of a record fine from Ofwat and the impact of last summer's flooding.
The surplus of £192.4 million for the year to March 31 represents a 41% decline on a year earlier, although the company said it made progress at an underlying level after profits rose 15.8% to £469.5 million.
Birmingham-based Severn was fined £35.8 million in April for deliberately providing false information and poor customer service in a period up to 2005. The company's actions resulted in customers paying higher bills than they should have done, leading Ofwat to label the firm's actions as "unacceptable".
It is currently awaiting a second fine relating to a separate Serious Fraud Office action on false leakage data given to Ofwat in 2001 and 2002.
All the matters relate to previous management and Severn said it was nearing the end of resolving legacy issues from the old regime.
It took a one-off charge of £13.9 million as a result of efforts to improve processes and staff training. Severn pointed out it had achieved a 34% reduction in the number of written complaints in the last 12 months.
Chief executive Tony Wray said: "These results demonstrate continuing improvements across the business. In particular, customer service standards are rising and we have outperformed against a tougher leakage reduction target."
Severn serves a population of more than eight million people from the Bristol Channel to the Humber, and from mid-Wales to the East Midlands.
Exceptional costs of £68.8 million in today's results also included £13.6 million to cover last summer's flooding crisis, when the rivers Avon and Severn burst their banks and forced the evacuation of the Mythe Water treatment works near Tewkesbury. Full restoration of supplies was achieved after 17 days.
Severn bought and made available 50 million litres of bottled water and deployed more than 2,000 staff from Severn Trent Water and its contractors to deal with the crisis.
