Hello, I'm Liv Garfield, Chief Executive of Severn Trent, and a big welcome to our half-year results presentation for the financial year 2026. Now, today I'm welcoming you from Wanlip in Leicestershire, and this actually is the largest investment individual capital scheme of the next five years. It felt like the perfect location to do today's results presentation. It is around future-proofing all of the activities in our wastewater location in Leicestershire for the long term for our customers. Now, before I get into my highlights for the first six months of the year, what I'd like to do actually is to share with you what I think now is a fantastic moment for investors to choose Severn Trent. There are three reasons that come to mind. The first is we are growing, as you can see, at a scale in terms of RCV.
What that does in terms of long-term RCV investment is it stores up value for investors. The second thing is that we're actually an outperformer. We lock in regulatory outperformance, and that again creates attractive returns for investors over the medium to long term. Lastly, of course, we're one of those unique companies that is inflation-linked, and that again creates attractive returns for investors. Let me now go on to talk about the first six months of the year and my particular personal five highlights. My first highlight is the fact that we actually landed once again the leading status for the Environment Agency in terms of our performance. That makes a whopping six years on the bounce of being the sector-leading company with four-star status.
We were the sole player this year to actually land it, and it's such a testament to the hard work of all of our colleagues. The second highlight actually is we made a really strong start in the last six months to the five-year period in terms of the ODIs. In actual fact, 90% of those metrics are green as we stand here today, which again is fabulous hard work from the colleagues across the business. The third thing is that that leads actually to the confidence to give an upgrade today in terms of our ODI performance for the year. We originally said we'd be at least GBP 25 million of ODI outperformance in the first year. We're now upgrading that today to at least GBP 40 million, which is again a really strong indicator of how we feel about the future.
Now, one of the strong correlators in terms of why we started so strongly is our spills performance. You'll remember we've put in thousands of solutions to really make sure that we step change our performance in the area of spills. That means we're confident this year of halving our performance year on year, and that generates some really good ODI outperformance. All of that combines to give a really positive outlook in terms of RCV growth as well. For this year alone, we're going to be growing our RCV by 13%. At the end of the year, we'll be a GBP 15.4 billion RCV situation. Now, I'm going to head deeper into the works, and you'll follow me in a second. First, I'll send you back to the studio to talk to Helen to hear about the financials.
Thank you, Liv, and hello everyone. Today, I'm delighted to share with you a strong set of first-half financial results. Here are the highlights. We have invested GBP 769 million in the first six months of AMP8, and we remain on track with our full-year guidance of GBP 1.7 billion-1.9 billion of capital investment. To fund our record investment program, we have raised over GBP 900 million of new debt in the period, around 80 basis points lower than the new debt allowance, giving us confidence we will outperform on financing for a 10th consecutive year. Our adjusted EPS is up 74% year- on- year, and this reflects Group PBIT growth of 57%, driven by higher revenue and effective cost management. Financing outperformance alongside another year of strong ODI performance means I'm confident to guide to a regulatory return for this year of around 13%.
Finally, our proposed interim dividend is GBP 0.504, in line with our AMP8 policy of growth by CPIH. In the regulated business, PBIT is growing by 59% year- on- year. Turnover in the first half of the year increased by GBP 215 million as a result of the expected bill increases, as well as higher consumption due to the dry conditions since April. Our turnover for the period also included over GBP 25 million of ODIs earned in the previous AMP. The higher turnover is partly offset by additional costs incurred because of the dry, due to higher volumes of water production and costs of moving water around the network. Driving efficiency continues to be a focus, and we have delivered GBP 18 million of efficiency in operating costs through reducing cost of failure and the use of No- Dig technology to repair leaks.
We have seen GBP 6 million of pricing effect as a result of increases in pay, business rates, and regulatory fees, partly offset by lower energy price. We have spent an additional GBP 39 million on investment in the year, which includes new technology costs and high depreciation on our capital program. Finally, I'm pleased to see bad debt remain in line with previous low levels at around 2.1% of core household revenue. This year, we expect profit to be weighted more to the first half than in previous years. This is as a result of higher core revenue in the first half, as well as increases in both depreciation and infrastructure renewal expenditure in the second half. With a GBP 15 billion TOTEX plan, it is essential that we continue to invest efficiently. In addition to delivering operating cost efficiencies, we are targeting at least GBP 500 million of capital efficiency in AMP8.
We have been developing these plans for a while, and there are four key areas we see as key to delivering this. Firstly, through a new materials framework, we have evolved our direct procurement program from AMP7, which enables us to buy directly from the manufacturers and access preferential rates for critical components. Secondly, thanks to our in-house design team and site managers on smaller projects, we can work directly with tier two suppliers to deploy cost-effective solutions more quickly. Third, by adopting innovative technologies, we can reduce the need for additional infrastructure, and we can use new digital capability to more precisely monitor the performance of sites to the agreed permits, enabling more targeted investment. Finally, to bring our Plug and Play program to life and the progress we've made, here's a short video.
Six years ago, we decided to insource our design team, giving us complete control over asset design and securing critical resource. This allowed us to launch our innovative Plug and Play program in 2023 to ensure we can deliver this record investment faster, cheaper, and greener. Traditionally, capital build projects take years to complete, with each asset designed individually and built on site, increasing the time we are there. Now, we have a completely different approach. With Plug and Play, we are able to standardize design and delivery of assets. Repeatable solutions that save time and cost less make maintenance more efficient with lower downtime, as well as better outcomes for our customers and environment. We selected assets across waste and water that we knew would see high volumes needed across AMP8.
We've standardized sizes, value engineered the most cost-efficient designs, and developed them so they are manufactured off-site and used in all our projects. This de-risks our capital program and reduces the cost and time of projects. We are now rolling a range of assets through production. First up are our modular chemical dosing rigs. Historically, this had over 40 different variations. Now, we have a single asset with a configurable design that can deliver around 80% of our dosing rig needs, reducing time to deliver and improving manufacturing efficiency. We are rolling out modular tanks, which have the potential to deliver a 50% reduction in materials, GBP 50 million in savings, and a 67% reduction in the carbon output.
With our rollout of smart meters to a third of customers by 2030, we have used our own design team to 3D print the antennas, which could save up to GBP 27 million in materials and labor. This year, we completed work at our Lower Moor treatment site, which is Plug and Play in action. Located in South Worcestershire, this is a Wanlip scheme that had a tight regulatory deadline to hit. The Plug and Play approach helped us to standardize Lower Moor by using mobile prefabricated settlement and treatment tanks that can just be delivered and installed on site. This meant that the total project cost GBP 3 million and was delivered within five months, compared to GBP 10 million in five years traditionally.
Through forward-thinking and gearing up for growth ahead of time, we are well on the way to deliver our record five-year investment program innovatively and efficiently for the benefit of the environment and our customers.
You can see from the video that our Plug and Play strategy of heavily standardizing and designing the high-volume components in our program once reduces both the time taken and the cost of delivery. This drive for capital efficiency creates contingency in our plan, which gives us choices. If we choose to, we can invest more for outperformance. With additional investment available through Ofwat's reopener process, our track record puts us in prime position to access even more funding. Efficient growth and a requirement to invest more drives long-term value. The benchmark for calculating outperformance is the regulated company's asset base or Regulatory Capital Value. RCV is used to calculate returns for value creation and is a key focus for our business. The chart on the left shows that while we have delivered RCV growth in previous regulatory periods, AMP8 represents an inflection point for Severn Trent.
By 2030, we will have more than doubled the value of the RCV over the last decade. The return we generate on our RCV is split into two parts: return on regulated equity, or RoRE, and the inflation on the RCV. RoRE is made up of the base return plus outperformance against the regulatory framework. Outperformance comes in three main categories: customer outcomes, total expenditure, and financing. As you can see from the chart on the right, over the last two months, we have delivered strong RoRE performance. We led the sector on returns through delivering customer outcomes, or ODIs, and skillfully managed financing costs to a lower level than the regulatory allowance. On TOTEX, our strategy has been to efficiently manage our costs to create further capacity to invest in our business. The RCV stores value by growing with inflation.
I am pleased I can give confidence our strong returns will continue with a regulatory return of around 13% this financial year. Along with RCV growth, our long-term value creation is underpinned by sustained outperformance of the allowed return. The 14% average regulatory return delivered in AMP7 was the highest in the sector. In fact, in real terms, the majority of companies earn less than the base return, whereas we more than doubled it. We have delivered this due to our continued operational performance, along with financing helped by inflation. Further analysis in the chart on the right shows that in AMP7, we were able to deliver the highest ODI outperformance for the lowest overspend on TOTEX, demonstrating our unrelenting focus on making ourselves more and more efficient. We have a culture to strive for outperformance in any situation.
In AMP7, we lived through a pandemic, very high energy costs, high construction costs, and more extreme weather, and we were able to manage our cost base and deliver the most for customers. Over the next decade, with the platform we have built, I am confident of sustaining this whatever the next regulatory framework brings. As a group, we have strengthened our balance sheet and additional facilities, extending liquidity. So far this year, we have raised over GBP 900 million of new debt, which has been issued at around 80 basis points lower than the regulatory allowance. With embedded debt also locked in, we are confident financing will continue to contribute to outperformance. Spreads have continued to tighten, narrowing around 20% since the start of the year, and this has helped us maintain the tightest spreads in the sector.
Our regulated gearing is 61.5% at the half year, and we reported the lowest regulated gearing in the sector last year, giving us the financial strength needed for the growth. I am pleased to share today an end-of-AMP regulated gearing range of 60%-65%. Finally, I am delighted we have substantively agreed our triennial pension valuation with the trustee, and our expectations remain that the pension scheme will be fully funded in AMP8. Even though we have a sustained record of TOTEX management, we are more confident we can outperform because of the additional protection given through the regulatory model. This protection, whilst not seen in cash flows until next AMP, means over half of our TOTEX is linked to a cost-specific index for inflation purposes. 77% of the enhancement cost allowance is protected by the Construction Output Price Index, or COPI, and a National Construction Wage Index.
38% of base cost allowance is covered with energy costs linked to an Industrial Power Price Index, protecting from power price volatility. Labor costs are linked to a National Wage Index. Finally, our financing costs are protected through a new cost of debt allowance, which is determined by the IBOX plus 30 basis points, where the IBOX is strongly correlated to movement in both gilt and credit spreads. If gilts increase, so does the IBOX, and therefore the cost of debt allowance also increases. We are growing more than ever before at 60% in AMP8, which is more than double our historic average and more than our listed peers. Based on our gearing range of 60%-65% at 2030, the equity element of RCV will grow to between GBP 7.7 billion and GBP 8.8 billion over the next five years.
Outside of the regulated business is Infrastructure Services, previously Business Services. This division creates cash flow for the group, as well as EBITDA growth and dividend cover. We continue to invest in Infrastructure Services to generate more energy and green power and growth in operating services. Our property development business remains on track to deliver GBP 150 million of profit by 2032. We have made two small acquisitions in the first half: Watertight and Industrial Water Jetting Systems, which form part of a strategic vertical integration of the Severn Trent water supply chain. This creates opportunities for Infrastructure Services to benefit from the increased sector investment over AMP7 and beyond, and gives us further supply chain resilience. Typically, Infrastructure Services has generated EBITDA in the region of GBP 50 million per year, and we are announcing today that we will double that to around GBP 100 million in FY 2030.
Finally, this shows our updated technical guidance and outlook. The three key elements of our outlook are: we're reaffirming the doubling of adjusted EPS from 2025 to 2028. We have also announced we expect regulated gearing to be between 60%-65% at 2030, and we expect Infrastructure Services' EBITDA will double to around GBP 100 million by the end of AMP8. Thank you for listening, and I'll hand you back over to Liv.
Thank you, Helen. Now, I'm going to start now by taking you through the operational performance of the last six months. Before I do that, let me show you what's behind me. Here, we've got some old decommissioned assets being knocked down to make way for some new, brand new settlement tanks. It's that example of consistent investment in our assets in growth and from that, we're creating real value. People often say to me, "What isn't Severn Trent doing to actually outperform the rest of the sector?" I believe there's four reasons as to why we're doing so strongly. The first thing is that consistent long-term investment in assets, making sure they're in strong shape, ready for the long-term needs. The second is that we've embedded a really strong operational culture in Severn Trent.
Our people have got a real passion to succeed and to outperform. Now, thirdly, over a long period of time, we've actually become a sector outlier in terms of a heavily insourced organization. That means, of course, that we can throw our resource onto activities that need it. It means we've got more ability to be adaptable as issues arise, but actually, you can also embed that genuine passion for operational outperformance. All of this means that we've had an unrivaled opportunity to do a fast start, both in terms of transition spend, but also in terms of our ODIs in the first six months of the five-year period. With that as context, let's head over now to our brand new built ASP lanes, and I'll talk to you more when we get there.
I brought you over now to see our brand new ASP, the activated sludge plant. You'll see there's a huge tower crane, and that helps us build the 10 m high wall structure. When it's complete, the way it works is that the ASP effectively pumps oxygen into our wastewater, and that creates aerobic bacteria. From that, we end up where we break down the actual matter, and that creates a beautiful, cleaner wastewater product that continues through the wastewater treatment journey. Now, thinking about our capital investment, we're feeling in really strong shape. Part of that is because we've contracted early. We're actually going to have over 80% of our enhancement schemes contracted by March 2027. It's also because we stood up our delivery activities in really strong time. Partly that's because we kind of contracted. It's partly, of course, because we've insourced heavily.
It's partly the fast start, but it's also what critically our Plug and Play technology. It's because of this fast start, because we've got such a strong situation in place that we're so confident of all of our PCDs coming good, both the two due this year, but actually the GBP 50 million of outperformance we've called over the course of the five-year period. Now, with that, I want to take you now to actually take the sample of our final effluent, and then we'll take that to the lab. We're going to go to the lab shortly and actually do a test. To do that, we first of all need to collect the final effluent and take that over to the lab, and then we're going to test for phosphorus once we get there. What we do is we lower this down carefully. There we go.
Make sure it does not get tangled up. Put it into the final effluent. Sink the bucket very clearly. There we go. Put it back up. We take this in a bottle over to the lab, and we will do the test over there to check that we have got perfect phosphorus standards. Let us go to the lab. As you can see, I am now in the Wanlip lab. I have got my final effluent sample that we just collected a second ago, and I am going to test that to make sure that the phosphorus levels are perfect. Now, remember, the reason we test for phosphorus is to make sure that it is actually really, really bad. You can create algae. It is not good for river quality. We want to make sure that it is absolutely perfect in our final effluent in terms of phosphorus standards.
Pretty much every AMP we get ever tightening P standards, and that is all part of our desire to make our contribution to the environment even better each and every five-year period. The way that we do the test is as follows. We take a bit of the final effluent sample. Okay, ready? We take a bit of this. Perfect. Put that in there like that. We then take a bit of the agent here, just like this. Okay. Okay, oh, one second. Got to use my multiple skills now. Okay, yep, perfect. We add that into there as well. We then put the top on it. We turn it upside down four to five times just to make sure that the final effluent and the agent are fully mixing. We do that. There we go. That was three, four, five.
We place it on the machine here, and that will take about 10 minutes. Plenty of time for me to talk to you about water. Our water business has had a really strong start to the AMP. If you look at the big metrics, supply interruptions, leakage, water quality complaints, all of those have had a really strong start. Leakage in particular is a massive highlight. You know that it is a three-year rolling metric, which means a strong first year bodes really well for the next few years, which is excellent. We are really pleased. This is going to be one of the highest performing ODIs for us financially over the course of the AMP, and we are so proud of the fact that even with a long dry summer, we have still done a brilliant job.
We're probably one of only a handful in the sector that will do well on this metric, and it's all testament again to the activities we've done previously. Actually, let me not talk about it. Let's do a video to bring it to life.
Leakage is a critical water performance measure, and we are proudly on track to hit our target for the eighth consecutive year. Driving leakage down is vital for the environment and is something our customers really care about. It reduces the amount of water we take from the environment and energy needed to treat and pump water around the network, as well as contributing to fewer supply interruptions. Ofwat set us an ambitious target to reduce leakage by almost a third in the 10 years to 2030. In AMP7, we made a great start, reducing leakage by 16.8%, hitting Ofwat's target in all five years. The key to our success continues to be our people. We insourced our leakage teams, which have been bolstered by our strong pipeline of apprentices training at our academy.
This has given us greater control and better response times, and we doubled our detection activity over the course of AMP7. Over the next five years and beyond, the approach we are taking to drive leakage down is threefold: prevention, detection, and reaction. Prevention is about maintaining a calm network. This year, we began installing technology which allows us to optimize customers' pressure remotely, and early indications show that remotely managed areas have seen a reduction in bursts of over 20%. Detection is about quickly understanding when a leak has occurred. By 2030, more than a third of our customers will have smart meters, giving us valuable data that quickly tells us and our customers when leaks are occurring. Reaction is about fixing leaks as quick as possible. A key innovation is Origin's No- Dig.
It cuts down repair time for a long street communication pipe from two days to just under 30 minutes. This food-grade solution can be inserted into potable water pipes, and by using air water pressure to send it through the pipe, the solution will compact at the leak location, sealing it and stopping it. We began trials last year, and it is now deployed across half our communication pipe repairs. We have been beating our ambitious leakage targets for years, and we are committed to reducing leakage further. Lower leakage benefits the environment and our customers.
The good news is the samples come out perfectly clear, so 0.12, which is below the permit, and that's thanks to all the fantastic hard work of the Wanlip team. Now, these permits, phosphate permits in particular, they tighten, as I said, each and every AMP, and we know that when we look to the future, because we've not got a coastline, we have even tighter permits than most people across the sector. It's great that our performance is so strong, but it also means long-term increased investment across hundreds of our works over the coming AMPs to come. Now then, with that, let's head out there again and actually go and talk about spills. Behind me, you'll see a hive of activity. What we're doing here actually is we're taking repurposed assets and using them for the future.
These are old digester tanks that we no longer need. We've got some new brand new shiny ones you can see right in the distance. What the team thought to do is to take those old assets and actually use it for additional stormwater storage. That's just one of the many thousands of interventions being done to improve the number of spills that we have to the environment each and every year. We know this is a critical hot topic. We're investing GBP 1.5 billion between now and 2030 in creating literally thousands of interventions, all of which will bring that spills number down. We were the sector leader in the 2024 performance year, but we weren't happy with our performance. We knew there was loads more we could do.
Actually, this year, all of those thousands, up to 2,700 interventions over the last couple of years, are helping us come down to what we believe will be an on-average 13 spill rate this year, which is ahead of our 2030 target already in 2025. We have hundreds of colleagues tirelessly working to achieve that. There will be some cynics that might say, "But has it not been a drier year?" Yes, it has been, of course, drier than last year's biblical rain, but we have been modeling very carefully. Even if we had exactly the same rainfall as last year, this year, we still would have seen a 27% improvement, which is fantastic engineering and hydraulic modeling by the team. This is not just a single AMP's investment.
When we look to the future, the next target we need to hit is to make sure that every individual one of those CSOs spills no more than 10x per year. Right up to 2050, we're going to be investing billions of pounds. We have the largest estate actually of CSOs in the sector, over 2,500, and that means this is going to be a long-term capital intensive investment program for us right up to 2050. Now with that, I'm going to take you now to see the final settlement tank and talk to you about our wastewater performance. Come with me. You won't believe it, but I was here two weeks ago, and all there was was two big holes in the ground.
I come back two weeks later, and the teams are flat out, and we've now got one fully built final settlement tank to the left of me and a very, very well advanced one behind me, which shows the scale and pace that we're building investment across the Severn Trent organization. Now, it feels like the perfect location here at Wanlip here at one of our largest wastewater sites to talk about our wastewater performance for the year across all of the metrics. Of course, I want to start with pollutions. There's probably no bigger metric I would say than pollutions in our sector. When we think about pollutions, we know that we've been a top three performer for the last five years. Every year of the last AMP, we were a top three performer, but that's not enough.
We want to go even further with the performance in this space. That is why we have invested strongly and heavily over the last 12 months and will do for the five years to come. Be that the 400 pumping stations we are upgrading, be that the AI that we are investing in storm harvesters to try and predict pollution to the future, or also making sure we have got fast response teams to get on site even quicker to make sure that we contain any possible risk of damage to the environment. That means that we have seen already at least a 20% improvement in this year on our pollution performance, which will lead to strong outperformance financially, which is excellent. As I said, we want to go even further. It is not just the pollution metric though.
We're actually green on every single one of our wastewater metrics so far this AMP, which is fabulous performance. That's true whether it's excellent or severe flooding, whether it's pollution or whether it's spills, it's a really strong start. Now, we know that the crown jewel of wastewater performance is to be green, to be four star on EPA, and that's our aspiration. We've landed it for the last six years, and we're pushing hard to make it seven. With that, let me take you over to talk about four star status over at the sludge settlement tanks. I'm delighted to be sitting in front of our shiny brand new sludge settlement tanks. The reason I wanted to stand here and do our update on EPA metrics is partly because we're excited about these because they're IED compliant.
That means less emissions, better compliance, and reduced risk of any pollutions, but also because they're a key one of our metrics to land four star status, and it has to be 100% compliant on the sludge metric, and these are a great supporter towards that. Now, we've just achieved something that no other company in the sector has. We've landed six years of four star status. It's very hard to do a single year, never mind six years. That means a whopping 24 stars from the Environment Agency. When you look at the measures to achieve EPA four star, you get a sense of the wide range. You've got to be good at pollutions. You've got to be good at making sure that all of your wastewater sites are compliant on permits. You've got to be fantastic at sludge treatment.
Of course, you've got some water metrics in there as well in terms of managing the balance. It is a huge accolade to achieve this, and the whole organization is so proud of our track record in this space. Now, 10 months on, I'm pleased to be stood here to say that actually, as we come towards the end of the performance year for this 2025 year, 10 months in, we're green right now on four star status for year seven, which would be an even greater achievement. With that, let's move on to another part of the site.
We have talked today a lot about investment, but I want to move now and actually talk about customers because that investment is actually aimed at making sure our customers receive exactly what it is they want, and we deliver all the improvements that they voted for as part of the price of E package. Now, our commitment to customers is as follows. The first thing is we wanted to have a fast start. We want to make sure that from the very first moment that bills arrive, customers have accelerated upside from all of our improvements, and we did that strongly with the GBP 450 million transition spend.
The second thing is we want to make sure that we deliver at speed, and we're really proud of the fact that we're on track with all of our commitments so far this AMP, making sure that we can still confidently call the full outperformance on PCDs. We want to make sure as well, though, that customers get fantastic service on the everyday measures that we know they care about most, and that's the ODIs, and that's the Environment Agency's EPA metrics. Added to all of that, though, we still know there are some customers that just physically can't afford the bills. It's too much for them, and that's why we've got such a spectacular customer affordability package, and over the course of the five-year period, we'll help around one in six families who are struggling to afford to pay for their bill.
Now, as well as all of that fantastic work we do to either impress customers, support customers, or serve customers, we also like the fact that we're actually part of the community in the Midlands, and we were so pleased this year to once again be named in the Top 10 of the Social Mobility Foundation's index, and actually we came in at a fantastic second place, and that's testament to all the amazing work we do in our community to support people that need just a little bit of extra help.
Of course, all of this comes down to the culture of Severn Trent and to our colleagues, and we know that the single most important thing is making sure that we have a really engaged, highly committed workforce, and as such, we were so proud last week to get our engagement scores, which got higher again to our highest ever score, putting us once again firmly at the top few percent of the global utilities rankings, and that is down to the truly brilliant atmosphere that we have each and every day across Severn Trent. With that, it is now for me to summarize for today. What we have created is a virtuous circle, I believe, at Severn Trent. We have got a really engaged workforce. We have got fantastic assets and capital investment to keep those in a strong place, and that leads to outperformance.
When I think about my summary messages that I'd love you to take from today, the first thing is to remember that we're actually going to grow the RCV by some 60% over the next five years. The second thing is that we've got a culture of outperformance and confidence in at least GBP 300 million of ODIs and PCD outperformance over the next five years. The third thing is that we again have started strongly, and that means we continue to reiterate our guidance of doubling the EPS between 2025 and 2028. All of that added together means that you can look forward to industry-leading returns for the next five years, but also well into the future because we feel that we've got such a well-set up organisation and machine for delivery.
With that, I'd like to say thank you for listening today and welcome you to any Q&A with myself, Helen, and the senior team shortly.