Community support

Community support policy

Our policy is to build and sustain our involvement in the communities in which we operate to contribute to the long term sustainability not only of our business, but also of the environment, societies and areas that we serve.

We provide community support by dedicating expertise, employee time, money and facilities to projects, increasingly we are focussed on building relationships and developing genuine partnerships to tackle lasting change in communities rather than simply giving cash grants and sponsorship.

We are an integral part of our operating areas and we are committed to behaving fairly and responsibly, contributing to economic development, improving the quality of life of the work force and their families as well as of the local community and society at large.  We are a business with significant resources and we have a responsibility to use them for the benefit of our customers, stakeholders and the wider community.

Community support action plan

• Maintain involvement in community partnerships to tackle lasting change by addressing social issues, help improve the health and fitness of our communities, protect our corporate interests and enhance our reputation.

• Encourage employees to give work time to benefit community or educational projects.

• Provide support to local charities and community organisations, when operationally possible.

• Encourage employees to participate in Cheque it out, our employee based sponsorship scheme. Raising awareness of the scheme through internal communication tools and ensure all staff have access to apply for sponsorship.

• Ensure that all of our employees have access to tax efficient methods of making regular contributions to charities of their choice, if they wish to do so, by promoting and administering Payroll Giving.

• Ensure that employees have access to and are able to give at least 12 hours a year of company time to a wide variety of community or environmental volunteering projects through Just an hour.

• Continue to progress the education programme to support schools within our operating area by developing tools to support the curriculum.

• Monitor our level of engagement with educational facilities within our operating area to ensure that we provide the maximum level of support within the constraints of operational requirement.

• Ensure that educational material is relevant to the national curriculum and can be utilized by teachers and pupils alike.

• Supply selected schools within our operating area with weather stations, through the Northumbrian Water Globe project, to enable us to gather information as part of our climate change programme and also enhance the curriculum of the schools involved.

• Continue to support charities through the Northumbrian Water Care for Safety challenge which raises awareness and improves the company’s health and safety record.

• Support enterprise in education via volunteering and partnerships. This would include the organisation of industry days and support for ‘back to business’.

• Work to support the development of skills in our communities through the Regional Skills Partnerships and Local Skills Council’s.

Community support KPIs

• 40% of employees registered for Just an hour community volunteering scheme in 2007/08.

• 70% of registered employees to be involved in Just an hour community volunteering projects in 2007/08.

• Have 3750 hours of community volunteering hours completed in 2007/08 though our Just an hour employee volunteering scheme.

• 50% of available site visits to be taken up by educational establishments.

• Use internal communication to promote payroll giving to increase the level of employee involvement by 15% in 2007/08.

• Use internal communication to promote cheque it out to increase the level of employee involvement by 15% in 2007/08.

• Continue to produce educational material in line with curriculum requirements.

• Provide educational resources to 100% of educational establishments, within our operating area, that request resources.

• Engage with educational stakeholders to gain feedback on educational material on a regular basis.

• Complete arrangements to distribute, and train the users of, 50% of weather stations available through, the Northumbrian Water Globe project, by the end of March 2008.

• Raise money for charities through the Care 4 Safety challenge, by reporting and addressing all health and safety issues and concerns, reporting all accidents and near misses, completing good quality accident/incident reports and returning to work promptly after an accident.

Community support case study

Just an Hour - Sensory garden at Villa Real School, Consett
 
Just an Hour is our highly successful employee volunteering programme allowing each of our employees the opportunity to take at least 12 working hours a year to support community initiatives.

Paul Lowe heads up the planned intervention and leakage team based at Washington sewage treatment works, he and his team spent the day at Villa Real School in Consett. The school is a mixed day school for pupils with learning difficulties, from toddlers to late teens, and specialises in pupils with autistic spectrum disorder, during their time there our Just an hour team focused on improving the school's sensory garden.

The plan was to include some raised beds, places to grow vegetables and even places to raise chickens. Paul said: "We'd estimated it'd take a full day to complete the cladding and the raised garden areas, build the chicken coop and, with a little luck, erect the poly-tunnel greenhouse. Over the day the team successfully completed around two thirds of the jobs, and using spare remaining hours, some of the team returned to finish the challenge on a second day."

Every year the planned intervention and leakage team try and get involved in a Just an hour team project. "Most of the guys work in two man teams and the flushing operatives work alone," said Paul, "so this is a good reason to get together and do something as a bigger team and enjoy the day. It's very rewarding to do something for a good cause, and in this case a very humbling experience to see the severely autistic teenagers at Villa Real school enjoy the sensory garden we'd worked on."

Cheque it out – Kielder challenge

Cheque it out is our employee sponsorship scheme where employees can request financial support from the company for the charity of their choice. A group of employees based in the Pity Me contact centre took part in the gruelling Keilder challenge to raise money for two charities, the Alzheimer's Society and the Maternity Services Charity Fund, based at University Hospital of North Durham.

According to the organisers the challenge: 'brings together six colleagues and tests their teamwork and mental agility, stretching their planning and communication skills to the limit in the rugged terrain surrounding Kielder Water.'  The team of six who volunteered to take on the elements and conquer the tasks where Emma Caffery, Julie Drape, Steph Owens, Debra McGee, Stephen Snowdon and Gareth Thraves.

The team’s challenges included navigating through Kielder Forest, tackling eight problem solving tasks against the clock, then building shelters for the night before being able to tuck into to a well earned supper. The challenge didn’t go quite as well as the team planned as they forgot to hand in a puzzle they’d completed for extra points, managed to walk a few miles in the wrong direction and had to sleep over in their cars at the end of the challenge as the minibus didn’t go their way.

In the end it was a great success for the team just to complete the challenge and on top of that, including the help from Cheque it out, they raised nearly £500 for charity.

Care for Safety

To encourage our employees to be more aware of their own, and their colleagues’ safety, we introduced an initiative, Care for safety, whereby the correct reporting of accidents and hazards, the lack of reportable accidents and the encouragement of positive behaviour result in monthly cash payments to charity.

The challenge uses the money raised as an incentive for employees to think more about health and safety at work by spotting and reporting risks resulting in reduced accidents and improving the standard of accident and incident reports.

Initially the funds raised by the initiative were all donated to Mencap but more recently the initiative has been broadened to include charities nominated by employees.  Five charities, including Mencap, now receive donations generated by the challenge.

In the four years since the challenge was created a total of £218,290 has been raised.

Time period	Amount
Raised April 2004 - March 2005	£  16,720
Raised April 2005 - March 2006	£  68,740
Raised April 2006 - March 2007	£  72,270
Raised April 2007 - March 2008	£  49,890
April 2008	£    2,380
May 2008	£    3,845
June 2008	£    4,445
Total to date	£218,290

Whilst making a donation of £2,958 to the RNLI Sunderland Lifeboat Station, Dean Lawson, our Health and Safety Advisor commented: “Northumbrian Water’s Care for Safety challenge not only enhances the health and wellbeing of employees but also supports local charities and communities in our supply area. It feels really good to support the RNLI at Sunderland which works tirelessly to save people’s lives”.

Water made clearer

As a company Northumbrian Water is committed to working with schools in our regions and providing them with exciting resources to help pupils learn about the water cycle and the part that we, as a company, play in that water cycle. The National Curriculum at Key Stage 2 encourages teachers to take their pupils to water or sewage treatment works. As we are unable to accommodate all the schools in our regions on our sites ‘Water made clearer’ was developed to make learning interesting by showing the water and sewage treatment processes through video and using our H2O gang of superheroes to deliver our messages.

‘Water made clearer’ is an interactive CD rom that aims to give pupils an understanding that good clean water supplies and effective sewage treatment is vital for the health of the community and the environment. With colourful, easy-to-understand graphics, short films and interactive quizzes the pupils learn about the water cycle, water treatment, water’s journey to reach customers’ taps, sewage treatment, how important water is as part of a healthy diet, water conservation, how everyone can protect the environment by not putting things down drains and toilets that shouldn’t be and that not everyone in the world has safe, clean drinking water and access to effective sanitation. Through these means the local and global dimension has been highlighted.

‘Water made clearer’ is primarily aimed at key stage two pupils as it covers a lot of the topics they need to learn as part of the National Curriculum. However it has been successfully used by secondary pupils. ‘Water made clearer’ is available free to all schools and year groups on request.

The H2O Gang

Northumbrian Water’s very own superheroes, the H2O gang, were created to engage with children across our regions, spreading the message about the importance of water. The gang, Karl, Kelly, Jermaine, Bethany and Splash the dog, each have their own super power which is activated when they drink tap water. All superheroes need a challenge and  the H2O gang’s is to defeat the evil Dr Dry and his henchman, Drip, who want to rule the world by stealing or wasting all water – it is up to the ‘H2O gang’ to stop them!

Aligned to the company's education programme, the superheroes will educate pupils in a fun and appealing way at all key stage levels using comic style material in either CD, web or paper formats. The overall message is water is precious.  The ‘H2O gang’, who will have to constantly protect themselves from Dr Dry and Drip, will explore the water cycle, how water can improve everyone’s health, how to conserve this precious resource and how many people in the developing world don’t have access to safe, clean water – something we take for granted in the North East. The characters will be used in all educational stories and materials produced, they will also be making guest appearances at events throughout the regions.

The H2O gang were launched at the magical location of Seven Stories in Newcastle upon Tyne with children from the school which helped to choose the design for the H2O gang. The first two comics were read to the children by a storyteller in the Artist’s Attic of Seven Stories, where the gang made their first public appearance.

Since their first appearance they have travelled south to entertain pupils at in Broomfield Primary School, Essex and Southtown First School, Suffolk. They have enthralled pupils from Harewood School, Thornaby, at the Dorman Museum, Middlesbrough, been part of a Health Awareness day at  Our lady Star of the Sea Primary School in Horden and helped launch a wildlife garden, that we helped build, at Howden le Wear Primary School.

 Sunderland Academies

By 2009, Castle View School, Sunderland will be a model academy of excellent practice in business and enterprise education.  Northumbrian Water are the lead sponsor for turning Castle View School into an Academy with Sunderland City Council as co-sponsor.

The school is one of three in Sunderland that are being transformed as academies, they are being designed to meet the needs of local students and their communities. The Sunderland Model of Academies was developed in 2005 as an alternative to the normal model proposed by the Government.  Their model involves a number of sponsors, including the city council, who control education development in the city. The funding from these parties enables the Council to lever funding from the ‘Building Schools for the Future’ (BSF) programme. 

The Council’s programme sees the development of three academies in the more deprived areas of the city alongside the rebuilding/refurbishment of other schools in the city. This model of partnership is unique in the country and was subject to scrutiny by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES).  The decision to go ahead with the academies followed a consultation of almost 30,000 parents in the city.

Castle View school has identified the need to ensure new buildings provide sufficient social and service spaces to allow pupils to remain onsite in all weathers and at all times.

Outdated school buildings will be replaced with new Academy provision reflecting the school’s vision and BSF Agenda for 21st Century buildings of innovative design to contribute to the raising of achievement and attainment. This is the most preferred and viable option given the state of the existing buildings. The existing school sports hall is relatively new and will connect with to the new Academy buildings which will be constructed on the existing site.

In the future, Castle View School will have a positive impact on the local community and work with it to provide the best possible opportunities for its young people. It will be recognised both nationally and internationally for its work in raising attainment through partnerships with business, the community and other sectors of education.  The work of the specialist college is a key element in addressing the needs of both the school and its wider community in achieving excellence, with the specific purposes of raising standards of attainment, improving access to further education and employment, and contributing to regeneration and economic growth.  Designation as an academy will provide a flexibility to broaden the scope and extent of improvement and to have impact more widely.

Northumbrian Water is committed to the academies scheme as it is an opportunity to make a real lasting change in Sunderland.  It will allow a focus on educational attainment in basic skills and beyond. The Company will use its network of contacts to support the academy and can use its range of jobs as role models for students.

It is anticipated that building works will begin early next year with an opening for the Academy planned in the autumn of 2009.