Health, safety & wellbeing

At United Utilities our people are our greatest asset. We believe nothing we do is worth getting hurt for and everyone who works for us or on our behalf should go home safe and well. Our aim is to be recognised as a leader in the UK water and wastewater sector through robust risk management frameworks that aim to;

• Minimize lost time absences caused by work related injuries,
• Reduce process safety releases and incidents,
• Provide support, promote health and wellbeing and prevent ill health to ensure our colleagues feel good and function well.

To help us reach this aim, we focus on the following;

• Active leadership
• Engaged empowered employees
• Clear expectations
• Safe healthy working environments
• Simple effective systems
• Robust Investigations and implementation of lessons learned

Our policy health, safety and wellbeing policy (PDF 171 KB opens in new window) sets out a framework to drive our Health and Safety strategy.

We are accredited to ISO 45001 which ensures we have all the correct policies and procedures in place to be able to manage the risk and continually improve.

Health and Wellbeing

We believe that coming to work has a positive influence on an individual’s mental health and wellbeing, empowering colleagues to thrive at work. We know that a fitter, healthier workforce are not only happier and more productive, but also have fewer accidents.

We have realigned our health and wellbeing strategy; Thriving at work with the key pillars of wellbeing within our workforce, focusing on mental health and MSK conditions. The two previous factors account for the majority of sickness and therefore, we have introduced an executive sponsor to help drive the agenda throughout the business. By adhering to NICE and Health & Safety Executive (HSE) guidance and striving for standards of excellence with the Wellbeing Charter we hope to improve colleagues health and wellbeing. We continue to support our established community of over 400 Mental Health First Aiders and actively participate in local and national campaigns such as ‘This is Me.’ In addition to this, we have a rolling monthly calendar of awareness days and engage with different stakeholders such as Andy’s Man Club, Macmillan and the British Heart Foundation. We also offer a suite of interactive training around mental health including training on suicide prevention, stress awareness and mental health awareness . There is a wide range of support and proactive engagement regarding physical health, from discounted gym membership, physiotherapy benefits, smoking cessation, diet and nutrition support and private healthcare.

Personal Safety

Everybody that works for United Utilities or on our behalf plays a part in ensuring we all go home safe and well. We continue to cultivate an environment where we look out for ourselves as well as our colleagues to ensure everyone has the ability to come to work, recognise and avoid physical or mental harm.

Our personal safety program is built around  robust risk management frameworks which help to identify and control risks to our employees.  Given the nature of our work one of our key areas of focus is occupational road risk. We are focussing on clarifying expectations, improving driver data and increasing our engagement and communication.

Our commitment to Health, safety and wellbeing continues to be  acknowledged; in early 2024 we were awarded our 12th consecutive RoSPA gold standard medal, which means we have retained the RoSPA President's award for companies who have "achieved a very high level of performance, demonstrating well developed occupational health and safety management systems and culture, outstanding control of risk and very low levels of error, harm and loss."

In 2023/24 there were forty injuries that resulted in an absence from work, twelve of which were reportable to the HSE) under RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations).  This equates to a RIDDOR accident frequency rate (AFR) of 0.92 injuries per million hours, and a ‘lost time’ AFR of 3.06 injuries per million hours. 

In 2023/24 our contractors reported twenty injuries that resulted in an absence from work, five of which were reportable under RIDDOR. This equates to a RIDDOR AFR of 0.43 per million hours, and a ‘lost time’ AFR of 1.74 injuries per million hours.

There have been no employee, contractor or sub-contractor fatalities in 2023/24.

Process Safety

Process safety is a blend of engineering and management skills focused on preventing catastrophic accidents, particularly explosions, fires, and toxic releases. These accidents are recognised as low frequency and high consequence, looking at United Utilities these are potential hazards that are present in the treatment of water and wastewater.

Our approach to process safety will ensure we manage our risks effectively so that people, the environment and our assets are kept safe. We will do this by developing a robust process safety management system that provides a framework for United Utilities to understand risks, ensure safety critical asset integrity, change management and emergency preparedness.

As part of our process safety framework there is a Process Safety Improvement Programme in place that is being led by key roles across the business. The purpose of the improvement programme is to embed the requirements and activities detailed in the management system and to benchmark ourselves against best practice in order to close any gaps.

By 2030 we have committed to be recognised as industry sector leaders in process safety, to do this we will continue to develop our capabilities, investigate incidents thoroughly ensuring root causes are identified and translated into corporate knowledge. We will drive the sharing of best practice across the industry and continually measure and track our performance through the use of Process Safety Performance Indicators (PSPIs).