SES Water has set out plans to achieve the Wildlife Trust biodiversity benchmark at three of its sites by 2025, with the first expecting to receive accreditation by 2021.
The company made biodiversity a priority for its business by including it in its Outcome Delivery Incentives for its five-year business plan.
Woking with Surrey Wildlife Trust, sites have been selected at urban and rural locations including a treatment works and a reservoir.
The third location is still undecided, but an abstraction site is under consideration. Sarah McLaughlin, catchment scientist at SES, said the idea of the benchmark is to highlight that sites can be both operational and allow biodiversity to improve.
“The need to treat and distribute water isn’t incompatible with encouraging biodiversity. They can coexist and the benchmark definitely allows you to do that,” McLaughlin said. “The benchmark is flexible, it accepts that the main function of a site can’t be interrupted but they can coexist.”
She explained sites might traditionally have discouraged wildlife for fear of damage to assets but the benchmark works with needs of an operational site.
She said: “The first site is quite urban, the second is larger with greater agriculture around it and has an education centre attached to it for school groups to learn about water efficiency, get a tour of the works and learn how the water gets to their taps.”
The initiative is intended to educate the public about water efficiency and energy as well as biodiversity. SES is hoping to add an education centre at a second site in the coming year.
“The idea was that customers and the environment would be at the centre of our business plan, and we looked at how we could put that into a target,” she said. “Leakage you can reduce it by X per cent, but with biodiversity we had to think about what kind of commitment we could make so we decided to get the benchmark at three of the sites.”
As well as working with the wildlife trusts, SES engaged with other wildlife stakeholders and customers to gauge support. McLaughlin said customer feedback showed a willingness to pay and a strong endorsement of supporting a thriving environment everyone can rely upon.
The benchmark is one aspect of a wider biodiversity programme for the company. At its reservoir it works with Kent Wildlife Trust to encourage birds, especially owls, to use the site. The company worked with volunteers and students from a local college to build a wildlife tower to home the birds.
McLaughlin explained there are lots of small actions to be taken at a site to improve overall biodiversity. These included improving hedgerow by filling in gaps, creating deadwood piles as habitats for stag beetles and insects, installing birdboxes and owl boxes, reducing mowing to allow the chalkland to thrive. Mowing has been reduced at 31 sites already to encourage wildflower growth.
Every SES site has been given a biodiversity score to assess where potential opportunities can improve biodiversity and there is potential to achieve the benchmark at many more locations, McLaughlin said.