Context

The UK’s freshwater system is under pressure: from agriculture and sewage discharges to drought and poor drainage in the built environment. There is a tension between the water industry and the environment sector, which has delayed any truly collaborative progress. 

With the water sector has under significant pressure to improve environmental performance, Wessex Water sought to understand what success would look like to its key stakeholders and identify how and where it could improve and how to communicate its ambition to stakeholders.  Seahorse was then faced with the challenge of uniting diverse voices from across the sector, with the aim of rethinking how we finance, regulate and reform our water system to deliver better societal outcomes. 

Our activity

Seahorse conducted a reputation audit and a review of Wessex Water’s sustainability approach to understand its strengths and weaknesses. 

The audit included assessing current plans and KPIs, benchmarking these against the market, as well as interviewing key NGOs, market influencers, clients, and other key stakeholders. 

Working with Wessex Water, we then co-convened environmental, farming and water industry stakeholders (groups traditionally at odds) to bring cross-sector expertise together and develop a vision for the radical transformation of our water system. Over a year, Seahorse carefully built trust between these stakeholders by encouraging the water companies to take responsibility for pollution caused and share investment plans, and inviting stakeholders to co-develop a system that would channel industry investment into nature friendly solutions.  

This work resulted in the creation of a new coalition, which aims to deliver ‘Sustainable Solutions for Water and Nature’, known as  SSWAN. To date, the project comprises 9 organisations such as The Chartered Institution of Water and Environment, Green Alliance, RSPB, The Rivers Trust and Water UK. Wessex Water entrusted Seahorse with supporting the development of SSWAN’s call to action, messaging, and positioning. This work ended in March 2024.