Stakeholder engagement

We provide continuous resilient and reliable water and wastewater services to more than 3 million households every day. Extensive engagement with customers includes research, surveys, and online meetings allowing customers to challenge us and to help develop our plans (such as the Your water, your say sessions) and we invite them to join our online customer research panel "In the Flow". We share ways customers can save money and water and provide additional help to vulnerable customers through Priority Services.

Our annual employee survey gives colleagues the opportunity to provide feedback about our company, their job and their working life. There's a whole range of benefits – see Benefits of working for us – and through regular colleague communication and conferences we update our people on business development. Looking after health, safety and wellbeing helps attract, develop and retain a diverse team - see Diversity and inclusion.

we work in the heart of local communities, building partnerships, working with schools and young people to develop skills and opening our land for the public to enjoy. We aim to go the extra mile for these neighbourhoods, especially when our work is disruptive. Our community investments are delivered in close consultations with these particular groups. Where we undertake work that can be disruptive to communities, we make an assessment in advance and hold sessions in local places to explain what we are doing and why, inviting feedback from local people. Our current project to upgrade the Vyrnwy Aqueduct provides an illustration of our approach. We also provide information about the projects happening in local areas. 

From the National Trust to the RSPB, we work closely with a range of environmental and wildlife groups on joint projects to protect natural habitats, improve our catchment land and keep our regional landscapes beautiful. These partnerships allow us to deliver multiple benefits for customers, for the land, and for the water. Whether it’s a charity, an NGO, a professional organisation, or a regulatory body, the partnerships we enter ensure that the needs of the entire catchment are considered.

We run a programme of investor meetings and presentations throughout the year, both in the UK and overseas, to keep the company’s equity and debt investors informed of key developments. 

We spend significant amounts of money each year with suppliers to deliver maintenance and enhancement projects across our assets. This supports thousands of jobs across the North West. Our supplier relationships are based on partnership and fairness. From quarterly relationship management meetings to supplier conferences, we keep them informed and engaged, and periodically survey our supply chain to see what they think of us.

Our press office deals with local, regional and national journalists on a daily basis. We provide a reactive service as well as proactively promoting our investment programmes, community work and achievements through the media.

We engare with North West MPs through regular meetings, annual-drop in sessions with senior directors and party conferences. Conversations include our local investment schemes, our economic contribution to the North West, and key policy issues affecting the North West. We work closely with MP offices to resolve constituent queries and have produced constituency factsheets for each parliamentary constituency which includes contact details.

There are 35 local authorities and over 2,000 councillors across our region and through our Engagement Team, we build closer relations with locally elected bodies. We see many shared interests with councils as we both serve all the residents in these areas and face similar challenges such as population growth and climate change. There are many opportunities to collaborate and work together to tackle issues of mutual concern such as improving how surface water is managed to reduce flooding risk. We strive to be proactive and transparent, consulting with them to ensure that our planning reflects local sensitivities.

We meet regularly with a number of regulatory bodies – Ofwat; the Environment Agency; the Drinking Water Inspectorate; Natural England; and the Consumer Council for Water – to ensure that our plans address their economic, environmental and social priorities and concerns.