How we supply safe drinking water to a growing population and deal with waste water too. How we minimise our impact on the environment and continue to save water. How we keep customers' bills low, while still investing for the future. And how we do all this and still deliver the level of service you expect and value.
Blueprint is about being honest, keeping our promises and listening to all our customers. Find out more below about how our 25-year strategy, our five-year business plan and our customers are helping to shape Yorkshire Water’s plans.
Our vision for the future
This part of our Blueprint describes our vision and the future direction of the company over the next 25 years.
We’ve worked with our customers and our stakeholders to define the long-term outcomes you’d like us to deliver. Our outcomes are the objectives which we’ll be working towards, each and every day, to deliver our services to you, and will form the measurable objectives for us in our 5 and 25 year plans. As a result, our plans have our customers and the environment very much at their heart.
Our plans
Our five year summary
We need to ensure we deliver the services you value the most, protect the environment and meet our legal requirements, and we need to all this while keeping bills as low as possible. This plan provides a summary of our proposed business plan for the next five years from 2015-2020. Over the past three years we have worked hard with customers and stakeholders to develop a fair and balanced plan that has customer priorities at its core, protects our environment and ensures we meet our statutory obligations. Further to our accepted final determination of our plan from Ofwat in late 2014 this plan reflects any updated changes that have been agreed.
Our 25 year plan
We've worked with our customers and our stakeholders to define the long-term outcomes you'd like us to deliver. Our outcomes are the objectives which we'll be working towards, each and every day, to deliver our services to you, and will form the measurable objectives for us in our 5 and 25 year plans. As a result, our plans have our customers and the environment very much at their heart.
Final determination from Ofwat
Our plan was agreed with Ofwat at the end of 2014 details of which can be seen in the below document.
How our customers have shaped our plans
Our customers have been central to developing our Business Plan.
We have spoken to over 8,000 customers to understand what aspects of our water and waste water service are important and how our investment over the next five years and beyond should be prioritised. We have also captured views of nearly 30,000 people via an online survey.
Our customers have helped shape our plan through the many research projects we have undertaken; from highlighting their priorities for the next five years through to expressing their support for our business plan.
Customer Forum
In preparation for the Price Review, we have worked with an independent Customer Forum.
The Customer Forum is responsible for ensuring our customers’ views have been fairly reflected in our business plan. This section outlines our approach to creating the Customer Forum, provides details of the membership of the group and lists how and when we have consulted with the group throughout the development of the 2015-2020 business plan.
Our Customer Promise
Providing excellent customer service is at the heart of our business.
We're proud of the customer service we deliver, working 24/7, 365 days a year to ensure our customers all have clean water on tap and have their waste water taken away. If anything goes wrong we always do our best to fix it, and we'll always work hard to guarantee the highest levels of service and support.
We have an aim to become a leader in customer service, both within the water sector and against other industries. If we are to achieve this ambition we need to think about the customer throughout everything we do, whenever we do it.
Last year we created Our Customer Promise to help with this. It's made up of three simple ideas that define how we approach the things we do as a business, both with our customers and our colleagues.
1. We're easy to deal with
2. We get it right first time
3. We're helpful and friendly
Outcomes for Yorkshire
We’re putting you at the heart of our business. Here’s what you told us you want for the future…
You need a continuous supply of clean, safe water for drinking and business use.
You told us that this is very important to you. You value water that’s safe, and looks and tastes good to drink. You value a reliable and resilient service to collect, treat and deliver water to homes and businesses. You also told us that it’s important for us to help you to reduce your water use but that we must also look at our own use and the leaks from our pipes.
You want us to remove your waste water and maintain the sewer network.
You said it’s important to you that we prevent homes from being flooded with sewage by investing in and maintaining a sewer network that can deal with heavy rainfall and safely take all your waste water away.
You want us to protect the environment.
You made it clear that it’s important that we take steps to minimise the effect of our operations on the environment. Pollution of water, air and land from any source is unacceptable to you. It is important that as well as safely treating and returning waste water to our rivers and coasts, we carefully manage the amount of water we take from the environment to supply our customers.
You want good customer service and acceptable prices.
You expect good customer service and a service that caters for specific needs at an acceptable price. You want us to make it easy to contact us at any time and you expect us to reply in a timely manner. You also told us it is important that we help you with your water use and provide options for you to conserve water, so that you can control the costs you pay.
Using your feedback to shape our actions.
Based on what you told us we have identified seven long-term outcomes, which will form the core of our future direction. We will plan to achieve these and seek to find innovative ways to work towards them, while keeping our prices as low as possible