Becoming more sustainable

We have a long commitment to becoming more sustainable in all areas of the business. This goal is becoming an even more important consideration as we work to strike a balance between service to our customers, our impact on the environment and communities, customer bills and future investment. We know we are not where we want to be, but we will continue to work hard to deliver for our customers and the environment in a more sustainable way.

Nine themes make up the heart of our sustainability policy, which has been agreed and supported by our Executive team. Our policy reflects all areas of our business. It helps us inform and make critical decisions over the long-term. Our nine themes are:

• Protecting water, a precious resource
• Managing wastewater and sustainable drainage
• Mitigating climate change
• Adapting to climate change
• Delivering efficient operations
• Investing sustainably for the long-term
• Ensuring responsible operations
• Enhancing customer inclusion
• Maintaining a safe and sustainable workforce

Our purpose is to deliver life's essential service, so our customers, communities and the environment can thrive, and we aim to deliver this in more sustainable way.

To be truly Purpose-led, we’ve launched an eight-year turnaround plan to turn around our performance and get Thames Water in the right position for the future. Over the last year, we’ve been focused on embedding the three themes of our turnaround plan, and making sure all our activity delivers against one of each of those themes – to fix the basics, raise the bar and shape the future.

Sustainability reporting

This year we have produced a combined Sustainability Report and ESG Statement to give our stakeholders a ‘one-stop-shop’ for content. We know we are not where we want to be, but we have made progress in a number of areas and have provided short case studies to illustrate this.

Environment, Social and Governance

We are constantly striving to create value for all our stakeholders, including customers, employees, shareholders, and the communities where we operate. To help achieve this we recognize that that it essential that we have and demonstrate a strong commitment to sustainability and ethical governance.

As a company we are committed to becoming more sustainable, promoting social responsibility, and maintaining high standards of governance in all aspects of our business. We continue to evolve and continuously improve the data tables in the ESG Statement to provide a clear and balanced view of the company’s performance against ESG measures. 

Our goal is to provide a transparent and comprehensive overview of our ESG performance over the past five years. Although we publish ESG data and information in other documents, we draw it together in a separate ESG Statement to improve the accessibility and transparency of this information.

In our sixth Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) statement we cover the following areas:

• Environment: Reflecting the interaction of our operations with the natural environment
• Social: Illustrating our relationships with our employees, suppliers, customers and communities, and our impact on the economy
• Governance: Covering the way our business is governed, covering leadership, remuneration, remuneration, audits and internal control, and external shareholder dividends

To support our strategic ambitions and our approach to sustainability, we continue to put the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda at the heart of our financial decision-making. As well as our regulatory and financial submissions, our ESG performance is independently benchmarked to provide insights into our sustainability performance.