Understanding and measuring our impact on the region we serve

 

Our purpose is to bring environmental and social prosperity to the region we serve.  We are committed to operating in a way that creates long term value to the environment and the communities we serve, alongside providing a fair return for our shareholders. 

 

Enshrined into our Articles of Association since 2019, our Purpose acts as a guide to our decision making, and is underpinned by our Strategic Direction Statement (SDS) and associated four ambitions. These ambitions were established in 2007 in conjunction with our customers, and more recently confirmed in our Thriving East research as being significant to the needs of the region we serve. 


We have been working to better understand the positive and negative impacts we have on the environmental and social prosperity of the region; impacts derived through our day-to-day operations and multi-billion investment programme.  This has led to the creation of a new Purpose impact assessment.  This is by no means a complete or perfect view, but we hope provides useful insight. We plan to update and share the overview annually as just one of the ways we seek to be transparent against our Purpose.​

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Hear from Andy Brown - Group Chief Sustainability Officer

Purpose impact assessment

Our Strategic Direction Statement demonstrates how we intend to deliver our Purpose.  It informs the associated strategies, commitments and targets which track our progress.  We have now brought them together in a way which assesses our environmental and social impact.  The result is a tool, capturing 30 of our most significant impacts, displaying both positive and negative impacts in absolute terms.

 

The measures selected are drawn from many sources, which include independently verified data, to provide a broad assessment of environmental and social impact.  For example, we use measures from the Environmental Performance Assessment, a regulatory obligation, through to social indicators, such as affordability support for vulnerable customers.

 

With differing units of measurements (e.g. km of rivers or tonnes of carbon etc), we have applied a monetised valuation to provide a common language for comparison.  The valuations are in line with the value framework which we use in the preparation of our Business Plan, in accordance with Ofwat’s quality standards for customer research.  ​

 

We recognise that applying a financial value to certain metrics is complex.  Our approach is not perfect or based on an exact science, but we have sought to use the best values available alongside expert judgement and assumptions to provide an overview which is transparent, meaningful and understandable.  Our Independent Challenge Group and Customer Board have been consulted in the development of our assessment, and at this moment in time, we believe it presents the most complete view and offers a valuable insight.  It will continue to evolve as our approach and best practice develops.  Read more on our methodology.

Overall, our impact shows that we are delivering positive net value to the region through the reliable core elements of our business: providing safe, clean drinking water, treating used water to a high quality and returning it to the environment. 

 

While overall our impact is positive, we recognise that there are areas where we have a negative impact.  Some are within our control and we will address these through our environmental and societal strategies.  Others are more complex challenges facing many businesses, such as carbon. Others, such as bathing waters, are not fully within our control and will require collaboration to find solutions. Regardless, we believe it is important to be transparent about our impacts and the benefits we create.  Our focus for this assessment is to concentrate on where we can drive the greatest positive change and to understand how our investment plans and partnerships can deliver this.  We have also included metrics around governance and effective financing in an accompanying table as these are intrinsic to delivering against our Purpose.

 

Belinda Goodman, Director of Responsible Business & Environment Advisory, Business in the Community (BITC)

What makes a leading purposeful and responsible business is one that understands both the negative impact it creates as well as the positive impact. Anglian Water has prioritised embedding purpose, and its approach to governance and transparency is excellent. This new impact reporting model will help stakeholders really understand the overall positive impact of Anglian Water and should be replicated by businesses all across the UK.

Ruth Wilkinson, Strategic Lead Purpose and Business Transformation, Mutual Value Labs

We believe that businesses of the future will be most successful if they deliver value for people and planet, through a profitable business model. At Mutual Value Labs we work with organisations to identify their optimal role in delivering mutual value; for people and planet, and for the business. Anglian Water has taken an impressive step by evaluating its impact across non-financial as well as financial capital. This move reflects a genuine commitment to purpose-driven business and a willingness to be held accountable for the impact of its work, even when broader systemic issues are at play. Anglian Water is leading the way and becoming a catalyst for change within the water sector and across the wider system.

Our measures in detail ​

Our Purpose impact assessment provides a view of our impact in 2024/25 on the environmental and social prosperity of our region.  As this can be complex, some of the metrics we use are made up of a collection of sub metrics. Although some measures could be considered in several ambition categories, we have allocated them to one for simplicity.

To understand these in full, see our methodology. 

 

Follow the links under the assessment for more detail on each ambition, including trend data on our impact and a summary of our commitments.

Environmental prosperity

Social prosperity

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Environmental Prosperity

The vast majority of the time, we treat and return water back into the environment to stringent quality standards, however, we recognise that when we don’t do this it can lead to pollutions which can have a significant impact. Our ambition is to have zero escapes from our assets by 2050 and we’re investing heavily to improve our performance.​

 

A lot of energy and other resources are required for the treatment and movement of water and so our biggest negative impact on environmental prosperity is operational carbon. 


 

This has been a high priority for many years, we have made great strides in reducing this impact. Our ambition is to be carbon neutral by 2030. We have also reduced the carbon in the new assets we build by 64% compared to 2010.

 

For further information on these, please see the sections for A carbon neutral business and Ecological improvements.  

 
Social Prosperity

The benefit of delivering reliable quality water supply is our biggest contribution to the region. By contrast,  interruption to supply is our biggest negative impact on social prosperity, which are disruptive events for customers who place a lot of value on having a reliable service.

 

Financial support for vulnerable customers is another strong area. We are able to provide this via a variety of support schemes funded by customer contributions through 
cross subsidy and Anglian Water contributions as well as helping customers maximise their income by identifying unclaimed benefits.

 

For further information on these please see the sections for Sustainable growth and Resilient to drought and flooding.

 

Governance and effective financing

Our work and the impact we have depends on having strong governance and effective financing.  We have chosen a set of metrics, reported separately in the table below, to help provide insight into our governance and financing and provide some wider context.  Further details can be found in our Annual Integrated Report and ESG databook.

 

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