At the heart of our operations is a deep commitment to being a responsible business.
Despite a challenging year, we are actively transforming our network to deliver an inclusive, sustainable, and reliable service. We are putting our environmental, social, and governance principles into direct action by tackling the impacts climate change is having on the business, transitioning to low-carbon operations, and restoring local ecosystems to safeguard drinking water.
Protecting the natural environment and powering our operations with clean energy are core priorities. Alongside key partners, we co-launched the UK’s first Super National Nature Reserve, which successfully secures groundwater quality for 500,000 Sussex residents through regenerative farming. Alongside this, our recent river restoration efforts include reinstating 300 meters of meandering channel in the Honeypot Stream, managing 77.73 per cent of our company land for biodiversity on our way to an 80 per cent target by 2030, and significantly exceeding our environmental goals by planting 18,775 trees. To rapidly reduce our carbon footprint, we secured a major wind farm contract to cover 36 per cent of our annual energy needs starting in 2027/28. We are also advancing six solar projects, including a marquee floating solar array at Barcombe Reservoir, and completing a permanent battery storage system in Kent to eliminate high-emission diesel generators during grid outages. These green energy developments support our broader target to achieve a 70 per cent fleet emission reduction by 2030, boosted by our active employee electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme.
At the same time, our customers and local communities remain the focus of our social commitments. We have significantly expanded our care for vulnerable households by increasing enrolment in our Priority Services Register to 212,320 customers and supporting over 78,000 households through our expanded social tariff. Our inclusive efforts were validated by retaining the gold-standard BSI Inclusive Service Kitemark and introducing a free SignVideo translation service for deaf and hard-of-hearing customers.
In response to recent droughts and severe climate pressures, we accelerated our water efficiency campaigns and smart metering rollout in Canterbury and Whitstable, successfully exchanging 13,413 meters and distributing 153,153 free water-saving devices. We also know how frustrating leaks are, which is why we spend around £63 million a year tackling them. Backed by an expanded team of repair staff and proactive leak-finding technicians, we fixed over 12,000 network leaks last year and cut the average time it takes to fix a confirmed leak from nearly 13 days down to just under nine days. Following past supply disruptions in Kent, we are also expanding our Central Operations team by 40 per cent to speed up our response to supply interruptions.
Underlying all of these public-facing initiatives is a strong foundation of governance, operational compliance, and workplace culture. We scored 95.16 per cent against the Environment Agency's standard for excavation waste risk assessments, ensuring our waste management remains both compliant and efficient.
Health and safety remains paramount, and our Lost Time Injury rate fell to a low 0.34, reflecting a deeply embedded safety culture. To protect our critical IT infrastructure against rising modern threats, we achieved Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation and met the DWI's Enhanced Cyber Assessment Framework. We are actively making steady progress on diversity and talent, with women making up 39 per cent of our workforce, well above the water industry average, and 29 per cent of our new recruits coming from ethnically diverse backgrounds. By tightly integrating these principles into our daily work, we are building a skilled, modern, and accountable team ready to secure your water for generations to come.
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