The last four months have flown by since I joined Southern Water. It’s been fascinating to get my feet under the table and talk to lots of different folk across the business and our Board about our environmental ambition.
What has struck me is how embedded our vision of creating a resilient water future for the South East of England is; and how our values and purpose support that vision. Having a workforce that is so aligned and committed is great and absolutely pivotal to us realising our environmental ambitions.
Committed to the environment
We have a small number of simple plans that will ensure that we can demonstrate to our customers, regulators and stakeholders that we’re serious about our commitment to the environment and can be trusted to deliver:
• Our industry leading pollution incident reduction plan.
• We plan and prepare to be compliant with our regulatory obligations – this is the most basic expectation of regulators.
• That we know how we will get to be operationally net-zero by 2030.
• We are moving towards using natural capital through a serious of catchment based initiatives; for example at Chichester and Langstone harbours; and on the Kelp Forest.
• We continue to drive our T100 programme.
In the next four years we will be rolling out some of our largest ever programmes – in the West of our area work is underway to deliver our Water for Life Hamsphire programme – at £900 million the largest ever water resources programme in UK industry history and designed to protect the vital habitats of the Test and Itchen and ensure supplies of wholesome drinking water to our customers for generations to come.
We’re also delighted to announce today that as part of our commitment to being Net Zero by 2030, we’re moving to a new 100% renewable energy tariff provided by SSE Business Energy.
This will help us reduce its carbon footprint by around half. What I know with even greater certainly know is that as a society we will only respond to the twin challenges of climate change and population growth by working together. For us at Southern Water this means embracing partnerships, being trusted to deliver and being able to use our knowledge to influence others.
Toby Willison
Director of Corporate Affairs and Environment