Revenue and profits rose at Cumbria’s water supplier United Utilities despite seeing its financial performance dented by the 2018 heatwave.

The company reported a 4.8 per rise in revenues of £83 million to £1.8 billion for the year ending March 31, while pre-tax profits were up 2.5 per cent to £363 million.

The total dividend per ordinary share also rose from 39.73p to 41.28p for 2018-2019.

In a statement to the London Stock Exchange, the company said last year’s heatwave had taken a £36m chunk out of its figures, and contributed to the £1m drop in reported operating profits to £635m.

It also revealed that £66m of the £80m invested in improvements to “safeguard continuity of supplies and protect our water resources” was spent during the year. The company now intends to invest a further £100m in the coming year to improve its performance against regulatory targets.

United Utilities chief executive, Steve Mogford, said: “We are achieving leading and sustainable results across many areas of operational performance, benefiting from the investment that we accelerated into the early years of the current regulatory period and from our deeply embedded innovation culture that is considered to be the best in the sector.

“Our Systems Thinking approach has underpinned a strong performance on our outcome delivery incentives against a backdrop of increasingly challenging targets and maintaining resilient services to customers during the extreme periods of weather in 2018.

“We are increasing our additional investment by another £100 million, to total £350 million, to accelerate the delivery of further performance improvements and facilitate a flying start to the next regulatory period.

“We are well placed for the remainder of the current regulatory period and beyond as we maintain our focus on providing great service to customers and creating long-term value for all of our stakeholders.”

The results came as United Utilities said the Labour Party's plans to renationalise the water industry was causing significant uncertainty in the sector.

In a statement, is said: “The possibility of 'renationalisation' is a key area of uncertainty" and could lead to the business being bought at "below fair market value.”

Labour has said it wants to renationalise water companies and energy network providers, including National Grid, accusing offshore owners of profiting excessively from the monopolies.

Meanwhile, progress continues in earnest on the £300m West Cumbria Water Supplies project, that will take water from Thirlmere Reservoir to bring more reliable and sustainable water supplies into Allerdale and Copeland.

The project, which involves 100km of new pipeline, is due to be completed by 2022.