With the blink of an eye, we’re at the end of 2024.
At this time of year, we often look back on the year that’s passed and the memories, challenges and goals that we might not have reached yet. But with the new year only hours away, we wanted to share with you our story of 2024, rounding up the achievements our South East Water family has made.
Are you sitting comfortably?
How we’ve supported you at home:
This year has been tough for so many of us, with the help and support of our internal support and external trusted organisations, we want to help as much as we possibly can.
Our Priority Services Register is available to help you, your family or your friends benefit from additional support from us so we can respond quickly to any particular needs. This service is completely free to register, and you don't have to be the named bill payer to be eligible.
This year we have..
Signed up almost 40,000 new customers to our Priority Services Register (https://www.southeastwater.co.uk/help/priority-services/help-paying-your-bill/). This means we now support over 116,700 of you!
- Awarded £104,000 through our helping hand scheme(opens in a new tab), which helps to clear water debt for those who demonstrate they are taking steps to achieve financial stability.
- Over supported 4,800 customers through our social and water sure tariffs. These tariffs cap bills and offer different eligibility requirements. If you need support, information about the financial support and tariffs we offer, can be found here.(opens in a new tab)
- As part of our mission to reduce the amount of water we all use per person, and leave more water in the environment, we’ve given away almost 203,500 FREE devices to help save water around the home and garden! Grab yours today, here!(opens in a new tab)
How we’ve helped to protect our precious environment 🌳
We often think of ourselves as guardians of the environment, and work hard to protect and enhance it for future generations.
South East Water owns or manages 33 Sites of Special Scientific Interest, a National Nature Reserve, two local nature reserves and numerous Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. A healthy, vibrant environment where nature can flourish is essential for protecting our valuable water sources. A goal as big as this one, takes a lot of time, so while we’ve achieved a lot in just the last year, we’ve been working on some projects far longer.
Our 25-year environment plan:
During the year we made great strides in continuing to deliver the commitments within our 25 year environment plan.
H25 focuses on four key areas which are:
- 💧 Safe water – futureproofing water for the environment and next-generation
- 🌳 Climate change – building an environment that adapts to a changing climate
- 🦋 Sustainability – protecting and enhancing our natural environment
- 🤝 Partnerships – working collaboratively to keep rivers and underground water sources healthy
Pilot projects are underway across our supply which involve our customers, partners, businesses and communities.
Never standing still, we will review and update H25 regularly, at least every five years.
Partnerships & Catchments🤝
Across the environment we have many areas of focus, and we don’t work alone. In 2024 we partnered with 14 other organisations, including farming and landholder groups, wildlife and river trusts and even the University of Brighton.
It’s important we collaborate with others to ensure the best is being done for the benefit of the environment. A large priority is working with farmers and landholders whose land is above or near to our underground sources of water (catchments). This year we’ve engaged with people at 74 individual landholdings and held three large-scale events. The purpose of this is to promote the grants we have available, to fund a variety of projects.
Funding:
This year we've awarded nearly £600,000 in capital grants, some of which has helped to deliver rainwater harvesting tanks (large-scale water butts with filters to keep water fresh) for multiple sites, which means these locations now have a total of 178,500 litres with storage. This means rainwater stored here, can be used across landholdings for washing machinery, watering crops and is safe for animals to drink.
Biodiversity 🌳
Biodiversity means having a rich variety of life: from animals to ecosystems. This helps protect the land above areas where we take groundwater from. Whilst this has been a five-year project, we have increased the land managed for biodiversity by 22 per cent. We also expect to exceed our targets by another couple of hectares next year (one hectare = 10,000 square metres).
How we’ve been keeping your taps flowing💧
We supply top-quality drinking water to 2.3 million customers in the south east of England. Through an impressive network of 9,000 miles of pipe, we deliver 544 million litres of water every day. It's the skill and expertise of our employees that ensures our water meets the highest standards.
There’s so much that we do every day to keep water flowing to your taps. From treating and pumping water, whilst testing the water quality to replacing pipes and laying new pipelines and fixing leaks. We only accomplish this through our more than 1,000 dedicated staff.
We invest in our people, and one of doing this is through apprenticeships. During the last 12 months we have upskilled 21 staff through new apprenticeship programmes and recruited 17 new apprentices for all across the business!
Here are some headline stats of what we’ve achieved in the last 12 months:
Tested more than half a million samples for water quality.
- Treated and pumped 199.6 billion litres of water equivalent to more than 61,410 Olympic sized swimming pools.
- Laid 29.5 km of water pipe for key projects, equivalent to the length of more than 283 Premier league football pitches.
- Fixed more than 21,500 leaks across the network.
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