Scottish Water Tops Latest Water And Wastewater Survey

A strong performance on following policy, sustainability, communication, and contractual approach means Scottish Water has risen to the top of the 2025 annual water company survey carried out by leading trade association British Water which reviews combined water and wastewater companies against 12 key performance areas.

Key findings from the survey include:

• Most significant rise from United Utilities, moving to joint third place with Anglian Water in 2025, from tenth place in 2024
• Most significant fall was Wessex Water, down four places to eighth place from 2025
• South West Water came bottom due to low scores on working digitally, transition between regulatory asset management plan (AMP) periods, and innovation.

British Water’s annual UK Water Company Performance Survey asks contractors, consultants and suppliers to rate their clients’ performance in 12 areas, including professionalism, contractual approach and communication over the last 12 months.

For the fifth year running, innovation is the lowest scoring area – at a time when there are widespread calls for water companies to find new ways of working to address key challenges. The average score for innovation was 6.3 out of ten, remaining unchanged from 2024.

Scottish Water leads on innovation, with an average innovation score of 7.5 against an industry average of 6.3, while Southern Water trails with an average innovation score of 5.1.

Dane Beauchamp, British Water’s newly appointed head of programmes, said, “It is disappointing to see innovation continue to score poorly year-on-year, despite the pressing challenges facing our sector. Innovative ways of working and thinking are crucial for the water sector to address challenges such as population growth, climate change, and affordability, and many of our British Water members are ready to deploy proven, scalable solutions.

“The sector really does need to step up its collaboration efforts and its support of initiatives, such as Spring, to rapidly increase the adoption of innovation,” added Beauchamp.

The second lowest scoring area was working digitally, with an average score of 6.4 out of ten, an improvement of only 0.1 from 2024. This indicates that strategic use of building information modelling (BIM) and many other digital methodologies, communication of requirements, and operating robust and efficient digital systems, remains mostly unchanged.

The highest scoring area in the survey was success in following external government and regulatory policy, which revealed an industry average of 8.0, with United Utilites the top scorer at 8.6 and South West Water on 6.6. This category looks at areas such as health and safety, quality assurance, and environment.

For impact on the supply chain, public utility Scottish Water scored the highest, with 7.8, against the industry average of 6.8, and high scores for engagement with the supply chain, willingness to absorbs inflationary costs, and supporting businesses and people to thrive and in sector to thrive. South West Water and Southern Water were joint last in this category with a score of 5.7.

Lila Thompson chief executive, British Water said, “In today’s resource-constrained market, the supply chain plays a vital role in helping utilities meet customers’ expectations, and failure to engage could result in water companies underdelivering the vast programme of works in the AMP8 investment period for England and Wales, and other significant investment programmes across the UK,” said Thompson.

The third lowest scoring area in the survey was AMP transition, including effort and commitment to reducing disruption, handling of tender process for establishing framework agreement, and coordination to ensure access to sites.

“The fact we are continuing to see low scores for innovation, digital working, and AMP transition is a clear indication that work still needs to be done as we start AMP8, especially if we are to improve the landscape in AMP9 and beyond,” said Thompson.

“The sector will be better able to tackle its shared challenges by bringing together individual companies, including utilities and the supply chain, along with the close engagement of key sector organisations such as Water UK, UKWIR, Spring, The Institute of Water and CIWEM - as well as British Water's UK, technical and international forums and the Water Industry Forum,” she added.

British Water’s annual survey was first undertaken in early 2003 in response to companies asking for feedback on how they were viewed by the industry supply chain, and how they were seen to compare with others. The survey seeks views of individuals working in the industry rather than a corporate standpoint and on this occasion, the majority of responses related to the water and wastewater companies, rather than water-only companies.

The survey reflects a variety of opinions across the supply chain at every level of business. This range of views provides valuable insights for the industry into how water companies interact with their supply chain, how the supply chain feels about this, and the progress water utilities have made over the years.

The 2025 survey results, and those from previous years, can be viewed here.