United Utilities (UU) is a FTSE100 company delivering essential water and wastewater services to nearly eight million customers (in over 3 million homes), plus 200,000 businesses across the North West of England. With 7,500 colleagues working across our sites and offices from Crewe to Carlisle, we continue to build an inclusive, supportive and high‑performing workplace. 2026 is the second year of our next five-year plan as a business (2025–30) delivering £13 billion of investment, the largest programme in 100 years, improving our infrastructure for the region we serve.
All of this relies on a variety of key resources. How we manage these is influenced by external drivers and relationships with different stakeholders: communities, customers, colleagues, environment, investors and suppliers. Consultation with these stakeholders forms an integral part of our planning process across the short, medium and long term, and our work delivers a range of long-term benefits for many different stakeholder groups. This value creation feeds back into the continuous cycle of what we do.
It’s not just about the 1.8 billion litres of water we deliver every day across our five counties; it’s not just about the thousands of kilometres of water pipes, sewers, reservoirs and wastewater treatment works we service every day – it’s also about our people, what they bring to our company, and what our company can do for them. We’re proud to be a North West employer with our opportunity for growth plans for the next five years. The better we take care of our diverse workforce, the better we’ll be able to serve our vast and varied customer base across the whole of our region. That means challenging ourselves to ensure that inclusion is hard-wired into everything we do.
Our performance must reach standards which are imposed by various bodies, Ofwat, Consumer Council for Water, Drinking Water Inspectorate, Environment Agency and Defra. All the UK’s water companies are subject to their regulations and enforcements.
Our focus has always been on strong leadership, transparent reporting and our culture of belonging which is helping us create an environment where every colleague can thrive.
In 2025, we refreshed our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion strategy under the banner of ‘Opportunity for All’. By talking in a language our colleagues can connect with, referencing real life experiences and adopting all kinds of diversity that makes up United Utilities. We worked on real feedback from our colleagues, the fact the words ‘equity, diversity and inclusion’ were not used in our everyday lives, was also being seen as negative. A change of language has kept us proactive in highlighting that ‘diversity’ means all of us (whether that’s being a parent, a carer, having a neurodiverse condition (or tendencies), our different abilities and medical conditions, working part time or full time, our ages, the languages we speak, our gender, how and where we were brought up… all of these things bring personal experiences we can all bring to our roles, make us what we are and offer the best customer service.
By embracing ‘Opportunity for all’ within the company, it has helped to not only retain our talented people, but also help recruit more diverse candidates, which will in turn encourage the best innovation, a true reflection of the 8 million customers and 200,000 businesses we serve every single day.
This focus has reinforced strong colleague feedback. In our 2026 engagement survey, we achieved a 93% overall engagement score for ED&I, with 95% of colleagues agreeing that UU supports diversity and inclusion – both scores significantly above the UK high performing, norm and utilities sector benchmarks. Plus, our current Glassdoor rating is 4.6 out of 5, with over 90% of reviewers saying they would recommend working at UU to a friend.
We have also strengthened our contribution to the region through enhanced community partnerships and cross‑industry collaboration, supporting wider societal progress in diversity and inclusion.
In 2025, we maintained our fourth place ranking in the Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers Index for the second year running, the highest‑ranked water and utility company. This achievement builds on a year of recognition, including:
• Diversity and Inclusion Initiative award – 2025 Water Industry Awards
• Outstanding Employer award – 2025 Water Industry Awards
• Outstanding Employer Award Highly commended – 2025 Employer’s Excellence Awards (in association with Metro)
• Ranked Top 100 – Women In Work (WiW) Gender Equity Measures Report 2025
• United Utilities’ website highest scoring – Religious Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (REDI) Index 2025
• Accredited Member of the Fair Employment Charter (Liverpool City Region)
• We are a Disability Confident Employer
• Gold member status of the Armed Forces Covenant Employer Recognition Scheme (held since 2013)
These accolades reflect our continued commitment to fostering a truly inclusive culture.