Yorkshire Water today announced it wants to buy York Waterworks plc - and promised the takeover would mean lower bills for 175,000 customers across the York area.

York Waterworks managing director Graham Wilford shows the before and after effects of filtration at the plant.

York Waterworks directors are unanimously recommending shareholders to accept a £33.8 million offer for the company's share capital, which would transfer both the water supply and its gas subsidiary York Gas to the water giant.

"This is a good deal for customers and shareholders, and provides proper safeguards for employees," claimed York Waterworks managing director Graham Wilford.

He said that because of its larger size, Yorkshire Water would be able to provide a service more cheaply and customers would benefit in the long term by lower bills.

Yorkshire Water says bills in York will be no higher during the next five years than they would have been with no sale.

But it has also agreed to cut bills for York customers by 15 per cent by no later than April 2004.

It is also promising a better free domestic supply pipe leakage repair scheme, a free business leakage audit service and an option to supply water meters at lower cost.

It says the deal will link York Waterworks and district, which uses water from the River Ouse, into the regional water supply grid.

Yorkshire Water is offering 457 pence for an ordinary share, which were worth less than 310 pence before takeover rumours hit the stock market last week.

Flushed with success

York Waterworks, set to be bought by Yorkshire Water, has a proud and independent history going back more than 150 years. Mike Laycock reports

Queen Victoria had not long been on the throne when, in 1846, the York New Waterworks Act received Royal assent, bringing a healthy new age to York - free of the fear of deadly cholera which dirty water brought.

A site was purchased at Acomb Landing for a treatment facility, taking water from the River Ouse just upstream of city pollution.

Pioneering filtering and treatment facilities were developed, including slow sand filtration, and in 1850, the York Waterworks began supplying a million gallons of fresh, clean water every day to the people of York.

Over the years, the treatment works went through a series of technological revolutions - the introduction of the country's first rapid gravity sand filters in 1902 and of chemical treatment in the 1930s. And all the time, the demand for water grew ever higher, with York needing seven million gallons a day by 1950.

York Waterworks became a public limited company in 1990, but maintained its reputation as "small but beautiful."

While Yorkshire Water was being castigated in the mid-1990s for poor service and disastrous supply problems caused by the drought,

York Waterworks was winning praise from the watchdog Ofwat as one of the country's best water companies.

And the mighty Ouse running through the city meant no drought would ever force the introduction of standpipes and other water restrictions in York.

Extra carbon treatment was introduced in 1995 to filter out pesticide residues from the river water, caused by farming upstream of York, and the company recently announced a multi-million pound scheme to increase the amount of filtration after pesticide levels exceeded EU limits a couple of times last year.

The company took advantage of the introduction of competition to the gas supply market by launching a subsidiary York Gas in 1996, which has been steadily gaining domestic customers ever since.

But water has remained the key commodity, with 11 million gallons now supplied every day to 175,000 people across an area stretching from Haxby to Wheldrake, and from Askham Bryan to Kexby.

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