Tantalising glimpse of greater collaboration in water

Create 51 recently ventured into the world of water supply resilience with one of its regular water sector clients, South East Water.

The brief? To develop an easy to read, digestible Resilient Customer Strategy for South East Water to engage on.

The challenge? To move the responsibility for greater water supply resilience beyond South East Water so that customers, communities, stakeholders, partners, water retailers and developers could also play their part in keeping taps and rivers flowing.

The resilient customer concept was a bold and innovative approach that South East Water first championed in its 2020 to 2025 business plan (which we developed and produced with its regulatory team) as it recognised a radical re-think was needed,  specifically around mitigating the impacts of extreme weather events on customers’ water supplies.

Indeed, the unprecedented water supply challenges witnessed across many parts of the UK during last Summer’s heatwave, and exacerbated as a result of more people being at home due to Covid-19 restrictions, means South East Water’s innovative approach was a supreme piece of foresight.

Roll forward two years from the embryonic ideas first captured in its business plan to today as South East Water has published its fully-formed and compelling Resilient Customer Strategy (and which we have also had the pleasure of writing and designing).

The document starts to bring together everything the company has done, and are doing, into one place to ensure its strategic thinking and messaging is clear and co-ordinated. The strategy is also supported by an appendix which essentially articulates its customer resilience “to do” list for the next five years.

More than that, the strategy exemplifies South East Water’s efforts to ensure its customer-centric ambitions and aspirations become as much embedded in business-as-usual operations as they do regulatory processes.

As David Hinton, newly appointed CEO at South East Water who championed this initiative during the business plan process, says: “We’ve recognised that everyone who uses water must become part of the solution to delivering greater resilience. Why? Because it requires a team effort to manage the water cycle – we cannot do what is needed alone and remove all the risks associated with everyone’s water supply. We need a greater level of collaboration across customers, businesses, communities and wider stakeholders than has been achieved so far.”

The potential benefits from this strategy are not just about what’s in it for South East Water. While it clearly needs to meet its challenging performance commitments the strategy is also about the bigger picture – namely ensuring customers, the environment, and indeed society, all thrive.

At a time when it remains as challenging as ever to communicate about water – the lack of it, the excess of it and just as importantly the value of it, and all within a continuing pandemic that has (for the most part) seen the public respond positively to calls to action – it strikes us that South East Water’s strategy provides a timely and tantalising glimpse of the true potential of greater collaboration in water supply.

You can find out more about South East Water’s Resilient Customer Strategy at https://corporate.southeastwater.co.uk/about-us/our-plans/resilient-customer-strategy/