Adam Zyndul, Policy Advisor at Scottish Water, is the SDG Network’s 15th guest blogger to share their views as part of our ‘Scotland’s Goals’ series.
Scottish Water is a public company that provides essential water and waste water services to nearly every household and business in Scotland. Through our work, we make a vital contribution to Scotland’s health, prosperity and the sustainability of our natural environment.
Clean Water and Sanitation
We support the ongoing work to implement the Sustainable Development Goals most relevant to our organisation. Goal 6 – ‘Clean Water and Sanitation’ is closely linked to what we do every day: provide essential services to our customers and communities across Scotland 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. During the six years of our investment period 2015-21, we plan to invest around £3.9 billion in maintaining and replacing our infrastructure and delivering further improvements to drinking water quality, protecting the environment and supporting Scotland’s economy. In 2017/18, the third year of that programme, we invested a total of £647 million. As a result, our drinking water and the quality of Scotland’s water environment are at their best ever levels. The Shieldhall tunnel in the south of Glasgow is a good example of how we invest. This is a £120 million project to deliver a new three-mile underground sewer which can fit a double decker bus inside. By providing 90,000 cubic metres of additional storm water storage, the equivalent of 36 Olympic-sized swimming pools, the tunnel will reduce the risk of flooding in parts of the Mount Florida, Toryglen and Giffnock areas and improve screening of overflows into the River Clyde.
Humanitarian
WaterAid (link: https://www.wateraid.org/uk/) is our chosen charity. WaterAid helps to change millions of lives every year by working in 28 countries to provide clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene in some of the poorest communities in Africa, Asia and the Pacific region. Over the next four years, in collaboration with the Scottish Government, we will be supporting WaterAid in their efforts to improve hygiene and sanitation in vulnerable communities and schools in the Southern Province of Rwanda. Two of our employees visited Rwanda in February this year and helped to lay the foundation stones for the new and improved latrines at Nkubure School. https://youtu.be/W2iqq_VE3IQ
Active Public Engagement
In February 2018, we launched Shaping the Future, our consultation to seek customers’ and stakeholders’ views on the future of their water and waste water services, and their thoughts on the challenges, opportunities and ambitions that we have identified. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLd_wpF91DP6F2a4cLf1qgdSzftpgBw-Ca
This consultation sets out our intent, and our three long-term ambitions, to achieve a level where our services are truly reliable and sustainable for future generations:
- Ambition 1: Delivering a consistently leading customer experience.
- Ambition 2: Keeping customer prices low by driving for further innovation and efficiency and through smart investment choices.
- Ambition 3: Increasing the reliability, resilience and sustainability of all our services.
As part of this work we have considered what contribution we can continue to make to the Sustainable Development Goals that are most relevant to us.
Feedback from our customers, communities and stakeholders will help us to define service and spending priorities over the next 25 years and make the best choices. To find out more and give us your view please visit our consultation website at www.yourwater.scot
As part of the consultation, we’ll be attending events throughout the spring and summer and we invite you to come and talk to us at these events. We’ll have a presence at The Royal Highland Show, The Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival, and also at Pride Scotland events in Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Shaping the Future consultation runs until August 2018 and there’s a lot of activity going on, and you’ll see more on social media channels over the summer, so please keep in touch.
