The UK water sector is facing growing workforce challenges, with increasing demand for skills, investment and long-term resilience. Collaboration across industry is essential to building a skilled and sustainable workforce.
Energy & Utility Skills has signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with British Water to strengthen partnership working across the sector. The agreement sets out a shared commitment to align skills, workforce planning and industry engagement.
A joined-up approach to skills and workforce challenges
The partnership brings together two key organisations with complementary roles. Energy & Utility Skills leads on workforce development across the utilities sector, while British Water represents the supply chain and provides a collective industry voice.
Through this agreement, both organisations will work more closely with employers, government and regulators. The focus is to improve coordination, reduce duplication and ensure the sector is equipped to meet future demand.
The MoU outlines collaboration across several areas, including workforce planning, policy alignment and stakeholder engagement. It also strengthens how both organisations share insight and promote the sector to wider audiences.
Building a stronger, more visible sector
A key aim of the partnership is to increase visibility of the water sector and the opportunities within it. By working together, Energy & Utility Skills and British Water will promote careers, support employer engagement, and help attract new talent into the industry.
The agreement also supports better alignment across industry strategies, particularly where skills and workforce development are critical to delivery. This is especially important as the sector prepares for significant investment and change.
What this means for the industry
This partnership reinforces a shared ambition to build a workforce that is skilled, diverse and ready for the future. It creates a more streamlined approach across the sector, ensuring organisations are working towards the same goals.
Stephen Barrett, Director of Membership and Strategic Engagement at Energy & Utility Skills, said:
“The workforce challenge facing the water sector cannot be solved in isolation. This collaboration brings together policy, skills and supply chain leadership to help ensure the industry has the people, capabilities and confidence it needs to deliver long-term investment and resilience. By working closely with British Water, we are strengthening the foundations for a skilled and sustainable workforce across the whole system.”
Lila Thompson, Chief Executive Officer at British Water, stated:
“We are thrilled to be entering this partnership with Energy & Utility Skills, championing and supporting the need for a skilled, resilient and forward-looking workforce, ensuring the supply chain’s voice is clearly heard at every level of this critical sector requirement.
This Memorandum of Understanding is a continuation of the work we’ve done on raising awareness and discussion about the human capital in water. It reflects our commitment to being the home of the UK water and wastewater supply chain, proactively connecting, informing and influencing the big challenges facing the sector so that it can thrive during an exciting period of transformation.
British Water is committed to supporting the need for a national skills strategy to replace people retiring out of the sector and fill the new roles that will be needed as the sector fast-tracks infrastructure upgrades. We need to continue to work together to make the sector an attractive place to work, ensuring retention and recruitment, as well as improving the sector’s performance on inclusion.”
Get involved
This partnership is just the start. If you are an employer, stakeholder or organisation looking to support workforce development across the water sector, we want to hear from you.
Get in touch with the Energy & Utility Skills team to find out how you can be part of shaping the future workforce.
