Our awards 
We're really proud of the external praise we've received for our work - from our most prestigious achievement of winning Utility of the Year for three years running to accolades from initiatives as wide ranging as our environmental work and customer service.
Here are some of our highlights.
2008
- At the International Green Apple Awards our innovative rainwater harvesting system scooped a silver award.
- Our communications team were voted 'Best in-house PR team' at the national CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations) awards. At the CIPR's regional event the team scooped a gold award for best website for Homekit and silver awards for
'one million green fingers' for corporate responsibility and community relations and further silver awards for public affairs and internal communications activity.
- Our IT team won Computer Weekly's 'Best Places to work in IT' award for the Utilities & Telecommunications sector, took the 'Best of the Best' overall award and were officially crowned as the 'Best Place to work in IT' for the whole of the UK.
- Our innovative risk management training programme won the "People Initiative of the Year" award at the Water Industry Achievement Awards 2008
- We won a Big Tick Award of Excellence from Business in the Community in 'Climate Change' for our activities to drive energy efficiency, increase renewable generation, and improve our ability to quantify and manage the carbon footprint associated with our current and future capital schemes.
- We also won a Big Tick in the 'Impact on Society' award to recognise our overall impact on the communities we serve, and a re-accreditation of our Big Tick in the 'Healthy Communities' award for our extensive volunteering programme.
- Platinum Status in Business in the Community's National Environment Index for the sixth consecutive year, gaining our highest ever score of 98%. We are amongst only 7 companies within our region to achieve this status. In addition, we were named as a Climate Change Champion, scoring over 95% in this area. We also achieved Platinum status in the National Corporate Responsibility index. With a score of over 95.5% we are in the top third of UK businesses in terms of responsible business practices, achieving outstanding performance in the environment and workplace elements of the index.
- For the sixth consecutive year, we were awarded a British Safety Council International Safety Award and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) awarded us our fifth consecutive Gold Award.
- We won the people award at the Water Industry Achievement Awards with our successful 'Streetworks' project which saw hundreds of colleagues trained in the Disability Discrimination Act and focused on how this knowledge could be used when planning road works.
2007
- At the National Customer Service Awards, we achieved the title of Utility Customer Service team of the year for our work towards a target of zero customer supply interruptions. We also won the Best Use of Technology in Customer Service award for our Real Time Network project which involved using mobile technology to detect problems on our pipe network.
- We were the first organisation to be awarded the Investing in Volunteers for Employers quality mark, the only standard which recognises excellence in employer-supported volunteering.
- Six awards were won by our communications team at the regional Public Relations Awards. Gold awards were given for our Clear Guide, our celebrity podcasts and our website. Silver awards were won for our use of photography for our Riverlife project, our promotion of our recreation facilities and team of the Year.
- We won the award for Diversity in the Workplace at the Personnel Today awards.
- We received two Green Apple Awards by David Bellamy at a ceremony held at the Houses of Parliament. A Gold was awarded for an initiative to reduce office waste and increase recycling with the introduction of 'tree huggers', and a Bronze for the work of the Environmental Affairs team in driving environmental performance through collaborative relationships with our contract partners and external stakeholders.
- We won the training award category with our Risk Management Training initiative at the prestigious Utility Industry Achievement Awards.
2006
- We picked up the Utilities Customer Service Team of the Year Award with Balfour Beatty Utilities (BBUL) at the National Customer Service Awards.
- Kevin Whiteman, our Chief Executive was chosen as Business Leader of the Year at the National Business Awards 2006. The Leadership Award is the UK's most sought after business accolade.
- We won Utility Company of the Year for the third successive year at the prestigious Utility Industry Achievement Awards - an unprecedented achievement.
