Our long-term ambition
Our vision for the future is “Trust beyond water – providing excellent customer experiences.”
Our customers and stakeholders expect more than just the product we supply. It reflects our mission to be “A company that our communities trust and are proud of. To deliver excellent experiences and create social and economic value.”
Bristol Water... Clearly
Bristol Water… Clearly is our long-term ambition looking ahead to 2050.
It sets out what we have been doing, who we have been listening to and working with, and what we could do in the future. It sets out some of the options we face for the long term, and how we plan to work with others to address shared challenges. We have used the views of our customers, stakeholders and employees to develop this future ambition. Bristol Water… Clearly pays close attention to what we have heard and translates these views into our plans for the future.
You can share your views on our future plans by emailing strategyandregulation@bristolwater.co.uk or join the conversation on Twitter @BristolWater using #bristolwaterclearly
See below a summary of our objectives and you can download the full version of Bristol Water… Clearly below.
Excel at customer experience
Building trust and achieving customer excellence needs to continue. This is our top priority. We plan to:
- Improve our communication channels.
- Improve the use of data – for example, linking asset information to customer data.
- Transform the way that we deliver so that every interaction with us is positive – for example, reduced traffic disruption from our works.
- Respond faster to our customers.
- Make customer-centric asset decisions – for example, network geographic location link to customers
- Give customers a choice of bundled services – for example, provide water efficiency choice.
- Enable customer self-service – for example, Direct Debit payment choices used to help trigger vulnerable service promotion.
- Delivery every customer with good water pressure, including end consumers on shared connections.
Develop our people and our business
Our employees and delivery partners are key to our strategy – they are the source of our customer excellence and innovation.
Customer excellence means we need to be ready for the future shape of utilities, providing services that customers want (potentially not just water), rather than just a product. To do this, we will:
- Support local academic and entrepreneurial partnerships.
- Invest in and develop our people and organisation.
- Build joint ventures and partnership working to get wider benefits to our business and local community resilience.
- Participate in and encourage further use of competitive markets, such as for water resources and demand management.
- Reduce leakage and consumption.
- Collaborate to deliver resource-efficient communities.
- Actively promote metering.
- Develop cross-utility service offerings that connect with customers and communities.
Being trusted
The subject of our reputation runs through the entirety of our strategy and supports all the other strategic objectives.
It is not only about maintaining legitimacy with customers, consumers, communities and other stakeholders, but also about them having trust in our stewardship of the long-term sustainability and resilience of Bristol Water and our local environment.
Our objectives are to:
- Deliver resilient and high-quality water.
- Serve all major population centres with more than one source.
- Build trust through communicating our longer term plans.
- Continually improve the resilience of water supplies – this requires us to deliver across a wide range of areas, including leakage and water efficiency.
- Continue community engagement and leadership in promoting the value of water.
- Share our success and partnership working – for example, where customers help to support innovation that ultimately has wider benefits.
- Maintain the long-term health of our assets as a minimum; improving long-term health as we deliver the service improvements that customers value.
- Deliver fair returns for our shareholders.
Leading efficiency
We are committed to transforming our cost base by:
- Optimising our use of water resources and water treatment, in line with our Drinking Water Safety Plans.
- Setting ambitious targets to reduce costs further.
- Implementing smart technologies in energy cost reduction and increasing renewable energy generation.
- Applying world-class asset management processes.
- Applying continuous improvement and lean cost reduction to everything we do.
- Continuing to build long-term financial resilience.
- Achieving a low and efficient cost of financing.
- Having zero tolerance for health and safety failures for our workforce, our supply chain and our communities.