SEVERN Trent, which serves households and businesses in Worcestershire, is officially the second worst company in the country for the amount of water it loses through leaks.

As customers are repeatedly being told to save water, new figures have revealed that a staggering 542 million litres was lost every day throughout 2005/6 - the equivalent of 364 Olympic-sized swimming pools. And despite announcing huge profits last month and increasing water bills, the figures showed the leakage figure had actually risen from 502 million litres per day in 2004-5. The only company with a worse record was Thames Water. Severn Trent says it is tackling the problem and has promised to reduce leakage by investing £50m during 2006/7.

Mike Bishop, director of engineering and leakage, said: "We've already seen a 39 million litres per day reduction in the first two months of the new reporting year." He said a further £150m would be spent on mains replacement.

Last month, the Worc-ester News reported that turnover at Severn Trent's water division had in-creased 13.4 per cent to £1.15bn, while profits were up 30 per cent to £400.4m in the year to March 31.

The company, which serves eight million customers across the Midlands and has 46,000km of mains water pipe, had permission to increase bills by 15.2 per cent in return for major investment in the network.

Mr Bishop said the company was employing more leak detection teams and repair gangs, but was struggling to find suitable skilled staff because of compeititon from other utility firms and the EU's working time directive, which meant crews could not work more than 48 hours per week.

"We're addressing the long term skills shortage by introducing an apprenticeship scheme, to attract and train new staff to the industry," he added.

"We're encouraging our staff and our customers to play their part and report any leaks to us as soon as they occur. This way they can be inspected, prioritised and repaired."

Mr Bishop said the number of mains repaired increased by six per cent in 2006 and there had been a higher than average number of bursts over the winter period.