Our responsible business commitment to create more partnership community projects on water use and vulnerability.
We plan to increase the number of projects each year working in partnership with universities and local charities to engage with our community specifically to support our customers in vulnerable situations and reduce water use. We will develop a partnership project to look specifically at water footprints. A water footprint measures embedded water use, not just the water drawn from the tap.
This supports the WaterUK Public Interest Commitment to make bills affordable (also see our vulnerable customer strategy)
Desired impact – For South East Water to be a stronger part of the community – bring benefits to those involved in the partnership, but also helping meet our strategic business commitments to reduce water use, meet vulnerability needs and improve the environment.
How have we performed?
Engagement
In 2023/24, we undertook our largest programme of stakeholder engagement ever, to provide insights for the creation of the draft Water Resources Management Plan and the PR24 Business Plan.
We consulted with 2,500 stakeholders proactively, with 30 per cent giving responses across 25 individual stakeholder events.
We also undertook two ‘Your Water Your Say’ sessions, where stakeholders and members of the public question the Executive directly. Attendance at the events matched those of much larger water companies, with over nearly 1,000 registrants over the two events.
To support reputation recovery from the issues of Freeze-Thaw 2022 and Summer Demand 2023, we attended 89 separate stakeholder meetings, explaining to stakeholders the challenges we faced and the actions we’re taking to overcome them.
Out stakeholder perceptions audit, sent to 1,361 stakeholders concluded that regular meetings and strong relationships have enhanced understanding of our business challenges.
We support the communities we serve through our annual Community Chest scheme and other support. We’ve distributed £20,000 to good causes in the past year, including schools and cricket clubs.
Vulnerability
Our Priority Services Register (PSR) numbers have risen strongly by 28,005 to 100,869 this year. This represents a 38.5 per cent increase since March 2023 – 11.03 per cent of customers are on the PSR (8.03 per cent, March 2023). We continue to reach more customers needing support through our community work and data sharing with energy companies.
It’s been a successful year for our two new Community Partnership Leads. They’ve linked up with more than 150 organisations across our supply area to raise awareness of the PSR and build trust through community engagement. Relationships have been developed with local community groups, charities, councils and other stakeholders. They attended 41 community events, including eco fairs, summer fetes, job fairs and cost-of-living events as well as sessions promoting other support services for signposting – Citizens Advice centres, Job Centres, Stroke Association, foodbanks and Age UK. They’ve followed up by attending sessions run by these services within their own communities to offer further support to customers.
We made 11,100 bottled water deliveries to vulnerable customers on the PSR in 2023/24. We’ve improved internal processes and equipment to speed up delivery times and ensure customers receive adequate bottled water supplies. To support vulnerable customers, we’ve also converted our trailers so we can move tanks and pallets of water more efficiently. As a result, our response times will be quicker, our capabilities will increase and we’ll be able to serve our vulnerable customers even better.
We are working collaboratively with local councils to identify additional bottled water station locations for future use. Having pre-arranged, risk assessed sites speeds up the process of opening one when needed. We’ve also been contingency planning with councils to provide more support to vulnerable customers during incidents and to increase external support available to us. Four companies are partnering with us to provide incident support, boosting our resilience and improving customer service.
In January we achieved recertification to the Inclusive Service Kitemark, recognising our commitment to vulnerable customers. This followed an intensive assessment of how we support and meet the needs of our customers, and embed best practice into everything we do, while continuously monitoring and improving our approach. We were particularly pleased to receive the reaccreditation with zero non-conformities. Inspectors acknowledged that vulnerability and helping those with additional needs is embedded within our business and culture. We have an award-winning, industry-leading Vulnerability Strategy which drives our approach which we’re currently updating for submission to the regulator.
In January we assembled key stakeholders to discuss the challenges facing vulnerable customers and access to support at our annual Vulnerability Stakeholder event. This aimed to raise awareness, share learning and promote collaboration. Some 54 people from 34 organisations attended to gain the latest industry insight from experts. We also ran a workshop to help inform and shape our revised Vulnerability Strategy.
We increased our social tariff with inflation to £18,750 in April. We’re planning a new structured tariff system to replace the capped approach, driven by feedback from stakeholders and customers, and best practice, benchmarking and modelling. We’re also reviewing our Water Poverty Support, working on the modelling to offer more quality support.
We’ve signed a partnership with Age Concern and are working on partnerships with SCOPE and Kidney Care UK to share data and better understand the challenges faced by our older customers and those with disabilities, and customers with kidney disease.
Water efficiency
We have made a commitment to reduce water usage. One of the tools we use to achieve our goal are partnerships and community campaigns. In 2023/24 these included:
- Partnership with East Grinstead Town Council to promote water efficiency: This was our third sponsorship with East Grinstead Town Council, continuing with our whole town approach to water efficiency and additional services. This included attending local event days to promote our services and water efficiency, issuing water saving devices to customers, and working closely with the council on some jointly branded communications.
- Partnership with Ashford Borough Council to promote water efficiency in schools with our AquaSmart platform.
- Our Community Hub programme attending community events throughout the year with our redesigned community trailer to raise awareness of water efficiency and the wider support available from us, giving away devices and running competitions to win water butts.
By November we’d surpassed our target to distribute 130,000 free water-saving devices to customers. By year end, we’d sent out 180,495 devices, including leaky loo detection strips and water-saving shower heads.
Our household and non-household audit programme involves visiting properties to measure water usage and offer water efficiency advice and free devices. We continue to engage with farmers and landowners offering help with water storage solutions to make them more resilient in hotter, drier weather.
We’ve worked with farmers and land managers in priority areas to part-fund rainwater harvesting systems and provide water efficiency advice. This eases pressure on our tap network and boosts resilience, but also helps prevent soil, nutrients and chemicals running off into rivers during downpours.
