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WUN4ALL
Ep. 86 Water Efficiency Campaign with Felicity Beverley, Ofwat & Wendy Manuel, 23Red
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In this episode, WUN Advocate Heidi Knapton catches up with Felicity Beverley (Ofwat) and Wendy Manuel (23red) to talk about water efficiency, in line with the new campaign 'Let's Save Water' launching across the water sector.
With up to £75 million invested, they discuss building a coalition across regulators and water companies to engage customers on using less water, and how their almost all-female leadership team worked together to bring the campaign to life.
Bios:
Felicity Beverley is Director of Engagement and Campaigns at Ofwat, where she leads public affairs, stakeholder engagement, internal engagement and national campaigns. She has extensive experience in communications and engagement across the utilities sector, with a strong focus on building trust, fostering collaboration and delivering meaningful change. Felicity is also a passional champion of equality, diversity and inclusion, embedding inclusive leadership and engagement across her work.
Wendy Manuel has extensive experience delivering behaviour change campaigns across the public and private sectors in a range of areas, including energy efficiency and climate change. Currently, Wendy is Delivery Body Lead on the Water Efficiency Campaign, Let's Save Water.
Wendy turns campaign strategy into real-world activity and is responsible for coordinating campaign delivery, managing partner relationships, overseeing implementation, and ensuring the campaign achieves its water efficiency objectives through effective stakeholder engagement and performance monitoring.
Welcome to the Women's Utilities Network One for All podcast. Our corner of the world, where we'll be talking all things energy water, sharing personal stories and debating female issues.
Speaker B:Enjoy. Hello and welcome to all our listeners of today's podcast. I'm very excited to be leading this one with the lovely Felicity and Wendy, who I'll introduce in a moment. Thank you so much for dialing into this and listening to us today. We really appreciate it. Really exciting topic. Today we're going to be talking about ofwat's water efficiency campaign, which has got a huge investment of up to 75 million over five years to encourage customers to use less water. So it's a very hot topic in the sector at the moment. I'm sure there'll be lots of interest from our listeners for this. And just to introduce myself before we kick off then. So I'm one of the 1 advocates. My name's Heidi Knapton. My core role in the day is head of Universal Metering at South Staffs in Cambridge Water. I'm a very proud advocate for, for the Women's Utilities Network and this is one of many podcasts that we've done over recent months and years, actually. And you'll be able to find a list of them on our website. So please do go and have a look. It's our absolute mission to encourage more women to come to the sector, but once they're here to almost stay and thrive, and we absolutely support that. Whatever stage of your career that you're at, whether you're starting out, you're leading a team, or you're a senior person in the business, we're here to support. So hopefully you would have engaged with some of our materials and they're all on our website. You can look at our mentoring program, our blogs, our events. We've got lots of things coming up in the calendar, so please do have a look. But I won't slow us down anymore. Let's launch into some introductions. Felicity, do you want to give us a quick intro to yourself and your role?
Speaker A:Hello, I'm Felicity Beverley. I lead engagement and campaigns at ofwat. So my role covers public affairs, stakeholder engagement and internal communications. And it's all about helping people understand what of what does. But most importantly, bringing in external voices to shape our policy and decision making, which is even more important over the last couple of years. And when I joined offwat two years ago, within the first three months I was asked to lead the water efficiency campaign. So the second half of my job is campaigns.
Speaker B:Brilliant. Thanks, Felicity. Really excited to have you here today. And Wendy, would you like to give us your intro as well?
Speaker C:Of course. Hello, everyone. So my name's Wendy, I'm a client partner at 23ed23ED, a creative and communications agency that specialises in behavior change and I have the privilege of leading the workers delivery partner for the water efficiency campaign, let's say water.
Speaker B:Brilliant. Thanks both and welcome. And we are really honored to have you here today on such an important topic as well. And I have to say I absolutely jumped at the chance to lead this podcast as I'm in the water sector myself. So fully understand and appreciate the challenge we've got. Encouraging customers to use less. And this sounds like a really impactful and pivotal campaign that's launched and it has launched as well. Let's just point that out to our listeners, that this actually went live on the 30th of June. I think you just told me, which is brilliant. So really looking forward to hearing how it's going. So, Felicity, do you want to just kick us off then tell us a bit about the campaign? Why is it such a big thing? Big moment for sector, do you think?
Speaker A:So this campaign is really exciting. So it's a 75 million pound behaviour change campaign and primarily we need to reduce the amount of water that customers are using. So that's both within the household, domestic customers, but also non household customers. And it's for England and Wales as well. So a water efficiency campaign from an economic regulator is an unusual and bold decision for the regulator to take. The background is that during the PR24, the price control process four or five years ago, of what recognized that we were not reducing demand quickly enough as a sector with customers. There's a lot of work being done by the water companies to reduce demand and we could see that it wasn't going to reduce quickly enough over the next sort of 10, 15 years. So as part of our PR24 price control, we decided to introduce fund about £100 million to stimulate transformation sustained and measurable reduction in water demand across England and Wales using a range of water efficiency approaches. So we're really looking at this central fund to sort of capitalise and mobilise and collaborate across the sector to make more than the sum of the parts that the companies were doing themselves. When I picked up the project two or three years ago, it was still the initial policy idea. So we went through two rounds of policy consultation and we had a really positive response from both within the sector, from the water companies, wider stakeholders, but also from from outside the sector who all recognized there had not been sort of campaign, one campaign across the water sector in England and Wales around water efficiency and the importance of water efficiency. All of the water companies are funded to deliver water efficiency but there was no one story about water efficiency. So that's why we set it up.
Speaker B:I love that and I think that's so important to have that one voice across the sector as well. And like you say, to join up all of the companies in that, in that mission. I think so. Power. And I know, as I say, I sit in a water company myself and I think we really welcome that support and input too because to get that messaging right is really key, isn't it? And it is such a big challenge, particularly with the hot weather which has been a huge demand and you know, even now and we think it's getting a bit cooler. But you know, I can still see colleagues sort of running around the office doing our best to keep supplies on and you know, this, this stuff's so critical and important for us.
Speaker C:What's really important with this campaign as well though, and why we think it's such a big moment is because it is actually what you're right, it is about kind of responding to or having a message out there during extreme of weather moments. But we think it's just as important. Our insights have shown us that it's just as important to talk to people when it's pouring with rain outside as well as when we're experiencing this kind of extreme heat to really ensure that water saving becomes more of a salient issue all year round. And that's one of the pivotal thing, I think for us being able to deliver this campaign all year round, not just in those peak moments is quite an important part of it.
Speaker B:Absolutely, I totally agree with that. And Wendy, talk to us about the tagline. Am I right in thinking it's water is precious?
Speaker C:You're absolutely right in respect of the fact that that was what grounded or underpinned kind of our kind of creative thinking. So the creative proposition behind the campaign we undertook lots of research and insights, as you would expect and to really understand what people's relationship with water is and what their understanding of the water scarcity challenge in England is and the water challenge in Wales and what we know is, and you know, I that in those within the sector people know that generally people don't understand that water is a scarce resource. They think it's available, they know it's available when they turn their tap on. It's relatively low cost. Of course. And so consumption's just visible and as some of us call it, kind of behind a bathroom door, as it were. So what we really needed to do was start to create or explore a proposition that starts to create more of an emotional connection for people with water and start to explain in more plain spoken English and plain spoken language why it is a scarce and finite resource. And framing it as something that's precious and to protect it, we all need to use less is something that we found through research, something that really is compelling for people and something that people can start to kind of resonate with. More broadly though, you'll see this. Let's Save Water is the kind of campaign kind of platform. And that's something that through testing really is the call to arms really that is pivotal to this. So it's about kind of explaining or having a platform that demonstrates that everyone has a role to play. And let's say water is that kind of call to arms, that there are small actions, achievable, small, simple things that everyone can do every day across households and non household audiences to make a difference and inviting everyone to play their parts. And so that's the, hopefully people will see as the campaign kind of wraps up and launches across the summer, across TV out of home, start to see that tone of voice really come through in respect of changing people's connection with water, relationship with water, but also a rally high and building kind of whole kind of movement of people to start to save water together.
Speaker B:I absolutely love that. And actually you've just touched on two things that I've spoken about publicly, actually. One of them is changing customers view that water is plentiful and cheap. Because I think as a sector, we've spent many years almost prior to ourselves on that. You know, you turn your tap on, it's there. And look, aren't we great? We haven't had a hose pipe van and we build a lot of our messaging on that. But actually that's starting to shift now. I think we're almost highlighting things like climate change and what that impact actually looks like. And then the difficulties in turning the tap on and water coming out of it, and all the expertise and all the years of experience that people have got within our workforce to actually keep making that happen is really important. And the second bit you said, which I loved, was the emotional connection about water. I always talk about this too because. And we talk about using less, but people sometimes have a long hot shower after a hard day at work or, or, you know, one of my best Friends has children with autism who play in the garden with water and they get a lot out of that. And there's all these emotional connections that I think we're just starting to tap into as a sector. How do you think the campaign will link with those kind of challenges and customers?
Speaker C:I think it's really important for us to understand that we need to be really respect where people and have a use of water where they're more vulnerable audiences or where, you know, people want to use it for enjoyment, for celebration. Our job, when it comes to long term behavior change is not about being dictatorial, about asking people to do things that they feel uncomfortable with or jars with everyday life. And that's why hopefully you will see as people start to engage with the campaign, there's lots of small everyday changes that people can consider making that would feel comfortable with them. So ones that don't feel jarring, that don't feel like they're compromising, whether it's hygiene or comfort. And we did lots of testing to understand what kind of actions people might feel that they are more willing to adopt. That's not going to happen overnight as well. So it's about not only explaining why, and this is why we've seen through our research, it's so important. Before we even have permission to start asking people to change their behaviors and doing these different things, it is about explaining to people why we need to do them, what we're asking people to do, but also what the sector is doing as well in respect of that water challenge. And then starting to talk about the kinds of behaviours we want people to adopt. Those are things that could sit in everyday life, but also what we call one and done or fit and forget action. So things that might take a little bit more time or cost, but once you've done them, they can be quite impactful in your home or in your business. What's really important alongside that is talking to vulnerable audiences, or what we might call special consideration audiences, about when water saving is not for you, it's not a message for you because you might have medical conditions where you need to use water in your home. And that is absolutely valid. And it's really important through this campaign that we make clear that this is about people doing things that feels that they feel comfortable with, but explaining why in order to drive greater motivation to do those things in their home and their business.
Speaker B:Absolutely. Thank you, that's helpful. Felicity, do you want to jump in?
Speaker A:Yeah. No. I think the campaign is one policy lever as we talk about in offwat and also as we move to the new regulators. So as part of PR24, we set some really challenging targets for water companies to reduce leakage by another 17%. They're rolling out 10 million smart meters. That's all backed with £1.7 billion worth of investment. People talk a lot about reservoirs, so we are looking at how we can increase supplies. There's a big pipeline of 30 major infrastructure projects coming through, which includes reservoirs and water transfer schemes. But we also need to look at reducing demand. So water companies in themselves are funded on water efficiency, as you know, Heidi. And in addition we set up this central fund. I think the really key point that we need customers to understand is we can't just keep, we, we can't build our way out of this problem. Reservoirs are really expensive, they take decades to build and by 2055, 2/3 of the additional water capacity that we need needs to come from reducing demand rather than increasing supply. So we need to sort of look at the water efficiency campaign in that broader policy landscape and understand that it needs to work with other policy areas and that might include defra, bringing in at some point the water efficiency labeling. So how can the water efficiency campaign work alongside that policy? So it supports both of them. How can we work with water companies on rolling out smart meters, et cetera. So it's, yeah, it's the beginning of a four year campaign. So it's really exciting that we have the time to work and collaborate with water companies, but also with the other regulators and the government departments, both in Welsh government and in defra.
Speaker B:It's incredible and particularly when you word it like that and it makes you realise how powerful this campaign is and you just touched on it. But this brings together regulators, government, water companies and I think it's safe to say, you know, we don't always align easily. So how did that collaboration work and what's been so great about that?
Speaker A:I mean it's been amazing. Collaboration. Yeah, we have a lot of. So this 23 red who are the delivery partner, have 17 water companies, five regulators and two government departments sort of giving them a steer. So that's a lot of collaboration. And then there's the wider stakeholder engagement as well, working with non household and customer organizations as well as all the ENGOs and other stakeholders, both, both within the water sector and wider. Because of the way the policy was set up. When I, you know, we did the two rounds of consultation and there was a lot of positive response to the consultations. We had a high volume of responses for A water consultation. So that there was a lot of interest when I took the policy over. But I wanted to build collaboration in from the beginning. So it was really important. Me personally having come into the water sector, I just thought we could work far more collaboratively on these big future looking problems like how can we work together to solve them because no one organization can do it on its own. So I reached out to the Environment Agency, to Natural England, DWI Natural Resources Wales and started having these discussions about the water efficiency campaign and also set up a meeting with all of the comms directors from the 17 water companies. And that's where we started and it's just snowballed from there. So there's a lot of goodwill. Everyone wants to tackle this issue. We need to reduce water as a society and everyone came together to work from their own individual angles on it.
Speaker B:Amazing.
Speaker C:Just to build on that as well. I mean, obviously we know that that collaboration is key. When you think about what let's say water is there to represent. It is about bringing a collection of voices together, an ecosystem of voices together that can all tell the story of water, the water Challenge across England and Wales and invite people to play their part in lots of different ways that are credible and authentic to them. I think what's really important for us as the delivery partner is that we people outside of the water sector together alongside those in the water sector. If this is about long term behavior change, you need to have lots of different voices that don't have as much of a vested interest in water efficiency, but have a, also have a part to play. And we know from behavior change perspective it is about a frequency of message or kind of nudging people at different moments across the day. So how might we nudge people when they're buying in the market for, you know, some DIY products and kind of nudge towards a water efficient shower head as well as, you know, how might we actually kind of get a message in the shower behind the bathroom door? These are the kinds of things where it then goes beyond traditional marketing and becomes about a whole program of work where we try and build that collaboration both within the sector and outside of the sector. And that's really key, I think.
Speaker B:Really, really powerful, isn't it? And actually one of my favourite things about the campaign as we talk about how it's been set up and who's leading it, is that I think this campaign has been led predominantly by women. Talk to me about that because that's something I was really excited by when I heard it yeah, we didn't set
Speaker A:out to build a coalition. It wasn't part of the process. I think naturally in communications there are more women leaders. So, you know, there's quite a few women leaders both within ofwat, but when I was working across the other regulators, there are a lot of women leaders within the engagement space. I think women like collaborating and working with other people. They enjoy the communications work. So by chance. But it has also been really refreshing to work in such a supportive team where we're all trying to build those relationships, understanding each other's point of view, influencing, without direct authority as well. So we have to come together and sort of work through these problems. There are disagreements, but we talk our way through them. Those are the skills that have helped us get to this point where we're now launching the campaign. But this is just the beginning. This is the beginning of four years. So we hope to build on that and look at all of the data coming in and how we can work together for the next three or four years.
Speaker C:And just to say, just on that, you're absolutely right and Felicity's right. There are a lot of brilliant kind of women that sit within our teams that have helped. What I've really observed is that we've just had a whole diversity of voices and perspectives around the table more broadly, which is just hugely important when you're trying to deliver something to this scale and with this kind of ambition, that you just have lots of different diverse voices represented. And how you listen to that and how you pivot into that is really key. And that's what I've kind of. One of the things I've enjoyed most about this is just bringing together lots of different voices and having them have a seat at the table, as it were.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:Lots of different professions as well. I mean, even within ofwat, there's lawyers, procurement specialists, there's water demand expert and there's modelers. And then when you get within the companies, they have all these different professions as well. And we're all coming together and looking at how to tackle this big issue and how are we going to reduce demand and bringing all of our skills and experience to the problem. And people look at things in very different ways. So it's been. It has been great in that sense. Learned a lot from other people. Other professions love that.
Speaker B:And what advice would you both have for any women who are listening to this, who think, oh, their role sounds really exciting, how do I be part of that? Or how do I follow in their footsteps? What advice would you give our Listeners today.
Speaker A:I'm just trying to think. I don't know. I don't know how I ended up in this amazing role. In some ways, it is a dream role. I never set out when I was at university thinking I want to work in comms, I want to do engagement and I want to tackle a big, knotty issue like water scarcity. I guess I looked for a role with purpose and working in a water company and then at Ofgem for 15 years and within TFL as well, I just took those roles that really stretched me or interest me, and a lot of them were in the engagement space. So I think if you've got an interest in something and you've got a passion for it, those are the roles to go for.
Speaker C:Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. I. For me, I've never, never set a career path myself at all. I've just tried to do a good job and, you know, be a good team player, kind of try my hardest to kind of deliver work that I can feel proud of. And that has meant that I've been luckily quite successful at that. But I wholeheartedly agree. The thing that's really gotten me out of bed is being able to be proud of the work that I do and have it be purposeful. It's the thing that means that I can. Can get out of bed in the morning and, you know, spend sometimes more time at work that you might do than at home. But being able to feel that you're doing something that's really worthwhile for me has been a huge part of it and has driven kind of my motivation at work. But so what I think biggest advice for those considering kind of whether they wanted to join the sector or not, is, as Felicity said, what makes you feel passionate, what gets you out of bed in the morning and what can make you feel proud of saying that you do at the end of the day.
Speaker B:Day, absolutely. And I was just scribbling down a couple of my own thoughts just to tag on to that as well. I think advice for me, someone gave to me a couple of years ago and it stuck with me, was you don't have to be the loudest in the room, particularly on these big programmes. And often as women, we sometimes feel that pressure to have your voice heard and, you know, to speak up, but actually thoughtfulness and having that almost introverted input, even at the end of a meeting, can be just as powerful as someone who's spoken right from the start and has been really vocal. So that's. That's something that I always think about. And also that emotion and vulnerability are actually strengths too. I think sometimes as women we get called overly emotional or too much or not enough if we are being a little bit authentic or vulnerable. But actually think those are really key strengths that I try to embody and you just getting my thoughts going as we were speaking there. But it was great to see that this campaign had so many women supporting it and leading it. And that's something we obviously support as the Women's Utilities Network.
Speaker C:Authenticity is key, I think, to all of it. And. And creating an environment where people can show up as themselves is really important, I think. And so the team that we've looked to build around this campaign and because it's been, you know, a journey over the last six months to get to this point, but we've done that, I think in a way we've looked to do that in a way that really allows people to show up as themselves. And that's hugely important. When you're asking people to come together as a team, being able to kind of give them a safe space, space to kind of do that, I think is really important.
Speaker B:Absolutely. And having spent a little bit of time with you both before recording this, I know how much you embody those values and how much you do support and have that authentic style. So that's been great to see. So I guess circling around to the last part of this session really is the campaign's been live since the 30th of June. How's it going?
Speaker C:Oh, it's early days.
Speaker A:It's very early days. So it was deliberately a phased launch. So we doing stakeholder engagement around the campaign. Well, for at least the last year and a half, but certainly since 23Red were onboarded at the beginning of the year, we had been working with stakeholders and there were some regional roundtables. So we really made an effort to get out there and to meet stakeholders to talk about the campaign, to hear hear their views on it and to help inform the campaign. And then there was the brand launch and the PR launch and we're going into August. Where it is, is the much higher profile launch when your friends and family are more likely to see the out of home posters and the adverts, et cetera, which I'll let Wendy talk about. I would say the campaign has been delivered at real pace and I think that's from the moment I picked up the campaign two years ago. There's a lot of urgency around getting the campaign up and running because we need to change the way we use water. So there was a lot of drive from the start. We had the decision document last February. We ran a procurement process over the summer which for a campaign of this size 75 million was a really robust open public procurement process which took sort of six months. And then 23 red were appointed in December. And the contract, you know, we had to sign a contract with 17 more companies. So that, that took a couple of months and we've gone from that start at the beginning of the year to launching a campaign of this size in six months. That's really far fast. It's a lot of work, many hours work, really well planned. It's Pacey, it's asking people to go above and over within both the other regulators within ofwat, with DEFRA and Welsh government, but also with the water companies. And there's a group of people that have worked very long, long hours to get this live this summer, which was really important. Just look at the weather. I mean I know it's meant to be year round, but this summer has been a real demonstration around how and why our climate is changing and the fact that we need to change our relationship before water.
Speaker B:Absolutely. And Wendy, if we were to sit down again in 12 months and look back on this podcast, what would be your sort of measures of success or what, what do you think would have landed?
Speaker C:Well, I'd love, of course, I mean the first thing, once this is long term behavior change, we need to raise awareness of the issue that underpins this. So more people understanding that the water challenge across England and Wales and understanding and recognizing it's a real issue is, is the start. And we, you know, we, we say this a lot but long term behavior change does take time to see, start to create the sight line. So in 12 months time you want to start to see attitudes, a level of understanding, kind of awareness and understanding kind of shifting and then attitudes changing towards water saving behaviors. And so for me, what we want to see is that starting to shift, but also how we're learning and optimizing from what we're, what we're going to learn through the start of this campaign. How do we kind of continue to kind of pivot, take the learnings from our evaluation and bring that back into the programme of work to continue to finesse what we're delivering. And also this is a broad program of work. So I'm just as excited whilst we've kind of worked really long and hard as Felicity said, to get the TV kind of the paid media campaign live, it is about kind of Looking at youth engagement program, looking at how we can start to develop a community funding program. All of those bits are kind of in the offing and happening in the background as well. And so in 12 months time I want those to be really well established. So it is a broader program of work with lots of different organizations getting beside behind the message. So it's not just delivered through a TV campaign, but lots of different people telling the story in their own ways. And then the final bit for me, just in terms of what success would look like, and I'm going to steal from a colleague of ours who talks about this right at the start of this journey is talked about the like raising the level of touch when it comes to this. So this idea of, you know, when people don't wear a seatbelt in the car, you know, it's frowned upon, it's become a social norm that people don't accept those kinds of behaviors. The ambition with this campaign is that wastage of water becomes something that people come tut about go, that's not the right thing to do. That's for me. And success over time, that's going to take time, but that's the journey that we're.
Speaker B:I love that. That's really powerful.
Speaker A:The success for me in a year's time is building on that coalition and bringing everyone in and looking at all the insight and the data and hearing people's ideas around how they can use the campaign. So that would be amazing. And we're right at the start of the four years. So let's see the data that comes back in the autumn and then we'll start planning the next year and working with our stakeholders on that. From ofwat's point of view, we're working with other regulators really closely. That's the direction of travel that the government has set out. We're moving towards this new regulator which we want to increase. Working together closely. We don't need to wait for the legislation to change. We need to work really closely with the Environment Agency, ne, DWI and nrw. So I think building on those foundations and also sort of looking at policy areas such as the Water Efficiency Campaign or the Innovation Fund where we have collaborated closely with the sector and with other stakeholders. How can we look at that approach for other policy areas where it is suitable and how can we work in a more collaborative and impactful fabric? I guess at the end of the day for the water efficiency campaign, we need to see water usage going down is the ultimate and the only success measure, really.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely. It's as powerful as that, isn't it? And I guess final, final question then is just how can our listeners support, how can they support this campaign?
Speaker C:Get involved. I think if you're an organization who wants to kind of support the campaign through their communication channels, we would love to hear from you. First and foremost, we have kind of materials, campaign materials and people can use just to make it as easy as possible to get involved. We encourage people to talk to their friends and family about the message. You know, especially with those within the sector acting as advocates for the message and the campaign. We would hugely value that. And then finally, as Felicity said is, you know, we talk about this a lot. We're at the start of the journey and we want to collaborate. And so where people can support us with evaluation, where they've got kind of expertise or advice to provide to us, we would love to hear from them. So it is about asking people to just get in touch if they'd like to find out more, to please reach out because we love talking about the campaign and are very passionate about it and so just want to bring people along with us.
Speaker B:Thank you. That's an incredibly powerful podcast and it's. You always know it's a good one when time flies. So I think that's, that's been really useful and it's great to get the updates. So thank you for your time. Hopefully our listeners will be able to go and check out the campaign and also check out some of the other one stuff that we're offering at the moment in terms of our events and podcast. Like I say, please go and have a look on the website and join us as a, as a community. So thank you all and we'll catch you on the next podcast.
Speaker C:Sam.