Bollards hiding a mass of hi-tech wizardry will soon be on the streets of Oxfordshire, helping Thames Water to crack down on leakage.

Workmen will be putting up 61 of them in Oxford, Kidlington and Banbury from the middle of next month.

Radio equipment concealed in the bollards will relay messages from underground sensors to leakage monitoring computers.

Ian Brenkley, Thames Water's leakage manager, said: "This innovative system, part of our £300m investment to cut leakage, enhances our ability to protect precious water resources.

"The bollards are sturdy but unobtrusive and are designed to fit in with existing street furniture." Thames Water will have more than 1,000 bollards over its whole area.

It developed the technology with Vodafone, the mobile phone company. The water company, which supplies almost 12 million customers in the Thames Valley, London, Kent, Essex and the fringes of Gloucestershire.

It is on target to meet the stringent leakage reduction targets set by the industry regulator Ofwat.

In the first six months of this year, Thames Water fixed more than 47,000 leaks and, since April 1997, the company has reduced leakage by 180 million litres a day - enough to supply more than one million customers every day.

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