Operational performance
The ‘Northumbrian Water Schools Awards’, now in their third year in the northern region, are designed to recognise and celebrate the achievements being made by our schools. They cover both community and curriculum based projects and honour whole schools, classes and individuals.
In our southern operating area, we support ‘Cash for Schools’ along with the Essex Chronicle. This recognises excellence, with a focus on environmental projects from primary and secondary schools, within the newspaper’s distribution area.
A wide range of educational materials are available on our websites for children and teachers.
Partnerships
Water for health
NWL is at the forefront in the water industry in communicating the health benefits of drinking tap water. To date, over £244,000 has been provided for mains-fed water coolers in schools and around 600 have been supplied in nearly 300 schools. We also continue to promote bottle-free water coolers as a sustainable alternative to bottle-fed coolers.
We also support the Water UK and Unison led ‘Water@work’ initiative to encourage employers to ensure that employees have adequate access to drinking water.
Environmental
Key partnerships have been developed with NWL to help the conservation of biodiversity on our sites. Our contribution to the partnerships includes funding project officers and current partnerships include:
- Northumberland Wildlife Trust (Kielder and Bakethin);
- Durham Wildlife Trust;
- Essex Wildlife Trust (Hanningfield);
- Broads Authority (Lound and Trinity Broads); and
- Davy Down Trust.
Sustainable communities
We have a continuing commitment to support projects and organisations within the areas in which we work and contribute to the long term sustainability not only of our business, but also of the environment, society and communities we serve. Corporate responsibility is integral to how we do business and as part of this commitment we are working in different ways within our communities to promote lasting change.
We are working with partners to create models of sustainable change and also methods of evaluating their success, which can be replicated in other communities. The focus has been on health, education, economy and affordable housing as well as creating new ways to support areas helped by our chosen charity WaterAid.
Health
Healthworks has been open for nearly two years now after we reached an agreement with County Durham Primary Care Trust (PCT) granting them a 99 year lease on a redundant building at our Easington waterworks. We worked in partnership with the PCT, the District of Easington Council, the Neighbourhood Management Pathfinder and other stakeholders to develop services for the local community in an area where census records show one of the worst health records in the country.