Melbourne Water lifts performance against customer commitments

Melbourne Water has wrapped up five years of reporting against the commitments set out in its 2021 Price Submission, with performance improving year on year and this year’s results assessed as meeting nearly all of the targets that matter most to customers.

The 2025-26 Customer Outcomes Performance Report is the last report for the 2021-26 price period. Over these five years, Melbourne Water measured its progress on six customer outcomes, which were co-created with customer input and approved by the Essential Services Commission. These outcomes were safe, reliable water and sewerage services that protect the environment, improve liveability, empower the community, provide good customer service, and keep bills as low as possible.

Overall, Melbourne Water assessed its performance against the six outcomes and the year overall was met.

Reliable services, healthy waterways

In 2025-26, Melbourne Water supplied 504 billion litres of drinking water and treated more than 368 billion litres of sewage, with zero non-compliances against safe drinking water and sewerage requirements. All ten monitored river health sites were again rated high or very high for the fifth consecutive year, and both the Eastern and Western Treatment Plants remained fully compliant with their EPA licences. Melbourne Water also met its greenhouse gas emissions target and reused 25,865 dry tonnes of biosolids, well ahead of its 16,800-tonne target, as farmers increasingly turned to biosolids as an alternative to traditional fertilisers.

Reducing flood risk, building community connection

Flood prevention efforts saved an estimated $476 million in damages this year, which is more than three times the original goal. Melbourne Water also reviewed 539 planning and building permits for flood risk, far above the annual target of 150. Community water literacy reached 76 per cent, just above the target, and nearly 4,600 people joined education programs and site visits, a big increase from last year.

Bills and efficiency

Melbourne Water kept bulk prices and waterways and drainage charges flat in 2025-26 and kept a strong focus on efficiency and affordability with $2.3 million saved in renegotiated contracts.

Where more work is needed

Not every measure hit its mark. Bulk service customers’ satisfaction with our water and sewerage services fell short of the ambitious targets set in 2021. We’ve worked closely with bulk services customers to identify what’s important to them through engagement on our 2026 Price Submission. Starting in 2026, we’ll be replacing bulk customer satisfaction with a new relationship health metric that better reflects the needs of our customers.

A separate program for extra investment in waterways and drainage, worth $21.2 million over five years, mostly met its goals. Four out of six parts, community involvement, flood mitigation, flood preparedness, and new stormwater quality treatment systems, reached their targets. We made good progress in understanding opportunities for large scale stormwater harvesting but found it challenging to activate at large scale. We will be including a focus on medium scale projects in our future work program. Planned program expenditure on natural wetlands management did not meet its target owing to unforeseen changes in regional land use since the program was established in 2021. Since then, we have redeveloped these programs for the future.

Looking to 2026-31

Melbourne Water’s positive performance outcomes in delivery of its 2021 pricing submission outcomes provides a good lead into our new 2026 Pricing Submission outcomes. Melbourne Water has used what it learned over the past five years to shape its 2026 Price Submission, which outlines customer commitments for 2026-31 and have now been approved by the Essential Services Commission. You can find more details about these new outcomes, including the new relationship health measure, on the Melbourne Water website.

The full Customer Outcomes Performance Report 2025-26, with detailed data for each of the six outcomes and the waterways and drainage program, is available here.