The only not-for-profit water company in Wales and England has been handed a national award in recognition of its practices and achievements in helping its employees and contractors get home safely at the end of the working day.

Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water, which serves three million customers across most of Wales and adjoining parts of England, achieved Gold in the internationally-renowned RoSPA Health and Safety Awards, the longest-running industry awards scheme in the UK.

The scheme, which receives entries from organisations around the world, recognises achievement of a very high level of performance, demonstrating well-developed occupational health and safety management systems and culture, outstanding control of risk and very low levels of error, harm and loss.

Welsh Water’s Capital teams – the in-house Engineering Delivery Team and Capital Delivery Alliance – also received RoSPA Gold Awards; with the in-house Capital team achieving RoSPA Gold for five consecutive years.

The company’s 2018 annual employee engagement survey shows very high scores for health and safety, with 97% of all our employees were clear what was expected of them with regard to health and safety and 94% believed that health and safety is taken seriously by the company.

The focus on health and safety throughout the company meant that it marked its lowest ever number of serious or reportable injuries in the last year.

As well as a strong focus on operational health and safety, the company has also put in place a huge amount of wellbeing support – including a strong focus on managerial training and support for employees’ mental health.

Peter Perry, Managing Director at Welsh Water, said: “We are very proud to have been recognised with a RoSPA Gold award for the third year running. It reflects the priority we place on health, safety and wellbeing throughout all of Welsh Water and the efforts of colleagues throughout the business to build a culture of continuous improvement in everything we do.

“However, we are not complacent about building on the standards of Health and Safety throughout the company – so while this good performance is very encouraging, we know there is always more that can be done and ways to improve, and we are determined to ensure we drive this forward together with all our employees.”

Julia Small, RoSPA’s head of qualifications, awards and events, said: “The RoSPA Awards have become the key fixture in the health and safety calendar with new sponsors and new awards this year including the Leisure Safety Awards, the Safe@Work Safe@Home Award and the Inspiration Awards. Highly-respected, with almost 2,000 entrants every year, RoSPA award winners benefit from the wide-ranging rewards of improved sector reputation.”

The majority of RoSPA awards are non-competitive and mark achievement at merit, bronze, silver and gold levels. Gold medals, president’s awards, orders of distinction and the Patron’s Award are presented to organisations sustaining the high standards of the gold level over consecutive years.