Our eight-year turnaround plan
In March 2021, we launched our eight-year turnaround plan and, with two years complete, we’ve made great progress in order to fix the basics, raise the bar and shape the future.
Our aim is to always deliver brilliant customer service and environmental performance - it’s the biggest priorities for our turnaround plan. It stretches over eight years and will transform our company from an underperformer to join the rest of our industry.
The turnaround plan will be rolled out in a sustainable way to make a real, positive difference for our customers today and into the future.
Components of our turnaround plan
Our turnaround plan includes the following:
Support for the turnaround plan
The board and shareholders of Thames Water have approved a £11.5 billion business plan for the current regulatory period ending 31 March 2025. The plan developed by Thames Water’s executive team will help improve performance and outcomes for customers, leakage, and river health and to accelerate delivery of Thames Water’s turnaround.
Our “frontline first” focused executive team, board, and shareholders will drive the plan forward with their extensive turnaround experience to create long term value for our customers, communities, and the environment.
Progress we’re making to improve our performance
While we’re not where we need to be and there’s a huge amount of work to do, there are some clear signs of progress:
- Being transparent with our Event Duration Monitoring system to allow customers to see the frequency, duration, and location of our consented storm overflows.
- Reducing customer complaints by 43% in the first six months of 2022-23, following a previous reduction of 44% in 2021-22.
- Improving river quality with the Thames Tideway Tunnel, which will help to reduce the amount of storm sewage discharges entering the Thames by 95%.
- Helping to reduce pollution by investing a record amount into sewage treatment works and sewer networks.
- Bringing onshore telephony channels available to customers across billing, waste and water related enquiries with UK only Contact Centres based in the Thames Water region.
- Offering a multi-channel experience by enhancing our website, social media, video calling and chat capabilities while continuing to prioritise high quality voice channels to support our vulnerable customers and those with complex queries.
- Investing over £100m to integrate our smart meters with online billing on our customer portal, offering an easy way of understanding and reducing water usage and helping conserve scarce environmental resources.
Going forward
We will continue to reflect our turnaround progress in the drafting of our next business plan and, building on the performance foundations laid in the current AMP, we will embed the sustainable improvement across the next five-year regulatory period starting in 2025.
Our improved internal governance and quarterly Board reporting will remain, but we will enhance this by working collaboratively with all our stakeholders so that we deliver for our customers, communities and the environment, establishing a real positive difference today and into the future.