Yorkshire Water
water supply and treatment utility company in England, United Kingdom
Yorkshire Water is a British water supply and treatment utility company servicing West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, the East Riding of Yorkshire, part of North Lincolnshire, most of North Yorkshire and part of Derbyshire, in England. The company has its origins in the Yorkshire Water Authority, one of ten regional water authorities created by the Water Act 1973, and privatised under the terms of the Water Act 1989, when Yorkshire Water plc, the parent company of the Yorkshire Water business, was floated on the London Stock Exchange. The parent company was Kelda Group in 1999. In February 2008, Kelda Group was bought by a consortium of infrastructure funds.
It is regulated under the Water Industry Act 1991.
Area
The company's area includes West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, the East Riding of Yorkshire, part of North Lincolnshire, most of North Yorkshire and part of Derbyshire. The area is adjoined on the north by that of Northumbrian Water, on the west by United Utilities, on the south west by Severn Trent Water and on the south by Anglian Water. It serves 5.5 million households and 140,000 business customers, and owns over 28,000 hectares (69,000 acres) of land.
Environmental record
Yorkshire Water has received fines for breaches of environmental law. For example:
Yorkshire Water was fined twice in April 2007.
“Yorkshire Water” enters the record as water supply and treatment utility company in England, United Kingdom. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Yorkshire, Water and water can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Yorkshire Water” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Yorkshire, Water and water provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8055763. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1989, 1999 and 2008.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Yorkshire Water”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Yorkshire Water primary sources, Yorkshire Water archive and Yorkshire research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Yorkshire Water”?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Yorkshire Water” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.