Police Scotland
Police Scotland save £250,000 per year in unnecessary water costs
31 March 2025 Reading time: 4 minutes
“Thanks to Business Stream, we were alerted as soon as our consumption levels increased and this enabled us to act quickly. Business Stream’s team is incredibly responsive which gives us comfort that any issues will be identified and resolved quickly, helping to avoid unnecessary costs or water wastage”.
Background
Independent of both the Scottish Government and policing, Police Scotland is the primary governance body for policing in Scotland. Established in 2013 by the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012, Police Scotland was set up to promote, support and oversee improvements in policing, and is responsible for the management and delivery of Forensic Services in Scotland and Independent Custody Visiting Scotland.
Police Scotland has over 300 sites across the country, with Business Stream providing water and waste water services, including added value solutions, to all of them since April 2020 through the Public Sector Scotland Framework.
The challenge
In January 2025, Business Stream identified a higher than usual water consumption at Police Scotland’s Baird Street Station in Glasgow’s City Centre - brought to their attention by the automated meter reader (AMR) installed on site.
As part of a drive to improve their water efficiency and take more control of their usage, Police Scotland have invested over £100,000 in automated meter reading technology since 2020.
Automated meter readers (AMR) are small devices that send meter readings in 15-minute intervals to a centralised point via either a wired or wireless connection to provide almost real-time data.
AMRs don’t need physical intervention from the customer, and the data can be accessed 24/7, 365 days of the year which means businesses, and their water retailers, can remotely monitor water use on site and identify any issues that arise.
Although the site’s usual consumption was around 5m3 (5,000 litres) of water per day, the sudden spike in consumption at Baird Street Station was showing a consumption of 379m3 (379,000 litres) of water per day - equivalent to 56 Olympic sized swimming pools of water.
Business Stream alerted Police Scotland, whose regional Facilities Manager (FM) was initially able to investigate and rule out any obvious issues like dripping taps or toilets. In the meantime, Business Stream deployed a team within 24 hours to investigate the issue and conduct any emergency repair work.
The solution
As there was no evidence above ground of any issues, the team used a correlator device, which listens for vibration at two ends of a pipe, to quickly check for any leaks in the station’s underground pipework and identify the location of the leak if one is found.
The team were able to identify a suspected leak within the Baird Street Station car park. Due to the pipework being beneath tarmac, this required significant excavation works, which Business Stream was able to carry out while successfully repairing the pipework, all within the same day.
Results
As a result of Business Stream’s quick and efficient pipework repair, the site’s consumption returned to around 5m3 (5,000 litres) of water per day and Police Scotland were safe in the knowledge that the hidden leak had been detected and fixed to prevent further issues.
We’re fully committed to improving our environmental performance and are certified to ISO 14001:2015. You can find out more in our environmental policy. Our Solutions team are certified to ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 45001:2018.
