Northumbrian Water Group has been named the UK’s top water company at a prestigious ceremony to celebrate excellence within the industry.
Picture (attached) shows the Northumbrian Water team at the awards ceremony.
The Water Company of the Year Award, presented at last night’s Water Industry Awards in Birmingham, follows Northumbrian Water being named Utility of the Year in December at the Utility Week Awards.
As well as scooping last night’s top award, Northumbrian Water’s Utileyes smart phone app, which allows employees to see what a customer is seeing when they call the company to discuss an issue, was named Customer Service Initiative of the Year. The app speeds up the company’s ability to resolve queries and problems, and reduces costs, by often cutting out the need for an initial exploratory visit.
In the Alliancing and Partnership Initiative of the Year category, Northumbrian Water’s first ever Innovation Festival, which took place at Newcastle Racecourse in July 2017, was highly commended.
The Water Company of the Year Award was presented to Northumbrian Water’s Chief Executive, Heidi Mottram, recognising the company’s combination of customer service, agenda-setting innovation, operational resilience and workforce best practice through its work in 2017.
Heidi said: “We are blown away by this amazing recognition of the industry-leading work that is done across our business. To win the Utility of the Year and Water Company of the Year in the space of just a few months shows what a fantastic year we have had, and that is down to the people across our business who go out of their way to deliver the best possible service to our customers across the North East and in Essex and Suffolk.
“Winning the Customer Service Initiative of the Year and being highly commended for our Innovation Festival also reflects the way our people innovate to find new, exciting and, above all, better ways, to serve our customers and communities.
"These awards spur us on to continue getting even better and making sure we remain at the top of the water industry, so that our customers get the best service and value possible.”
Northumbrian Water was also shortlisted for three further categories, People Initiative of the Year, Most Innovative Use Of An Existing Technology and Water Resilience Initiative of the Year.
Along with its partners in the Northumbria Integrated Drainage Partnership (NIDP), the company was also shortlisted in the Drainage and Flood Prevention Initiative of the Year category. NIDP sees Northumbrian Water work alongside North East local authorities and the Environment Agency to deliver a combined approach to tackling flooding.