7th biggest university joins forces again with largest water retailer Water Plus to advance smart water management
A multi-site organisation is tapping into more data on its water use as part of a move back to business water retailer Water Plus, a trusted and efficient water retail partner.
Nottingham Trent University (NTU) needed a reliable and time-saving water retail partner who could meet its billing needs while providing excellent water efficiency services to support its sustainability targets.
The university is the 7th largest in the UK with over 36,000 students and has ambitious sustainability goals including a year-on-year target to reduce water use across its estate. To accomplish this, NTU needed a partner with a proven track-record of delivering great customer experience and excellent water saving results.
NTU, currently ranked 2nd in the world for sustainability by UI GreenMetric, is actively working across its campuses to put sustainability at the heart of everything it does. The university is looking forward to working with Water Plus and experience the benefits of its flexible invoicing systems working in partnership to find ways to decrease water consumption.
Matthew Birkin, Energy Management Engineer at NTU, said “We are pleased to be returning to Water Plus due to its willingness and flexibility around invoicing and billing frequency.”
“Water Plus is committed to working with us to generate accurate invoices, which is imperative for both the university and its stakeholders. Our strong relationship with Water Plus and its knowledgeable and helpful customer service approach means it makes it easy to work with them as a partner – and enables us to gain more benefits, efficiencies and results for students, staff, the university and its communities.”
Working with Water Plus, seven data loggers have now been installed on some of NTU’s water meters, which feed information into an online analysis portal to give data on water use across each day. This allows the university to spot water waste to drive efficiency and decarbonisation progress as well as monitoring consumption.
As a returning customer, NTU has already seen how the proactive contact and service Water Plus provides can save water.
In December 2021, the Water Plus team alerted the university to increased water use at one site, allowing NTU to take swift action to reduce consumption. Water use had increased by 3.7 cubic metres of water an hour (3,700 litres an hour), which would have added more than £1,550 a week onto running costs if it hadn’t been addressed promptly.
As water is included in Scope 3 carbon emissions, increasing water efficiency and reducing water use also helps with decarbonisation targets and progress towards net zero in the public sector. Where hot water use is reduced, this also has a positive impact on scope 1 emissions due to the reduction in heating fuel.
Dan Hutchins, a Key Account Manager at Water Plus who is working with the University, said: “We are delighted to be working closely again with Nottingham Trent University which has seen the results our team can deliver including excellent customer service and efficiencies that support its goals and aims.
“It is a leading UK university, known for academic excellence, hands-on learning and strong industry links, as well as pioneering approaches – and are once again taking a lead with smarter water management and additional data analysis and support from our experienced team. So, it’s a big welcome back to Nottingham Trent University.”
“We’ve built strong relationships across the public sector as a trusted partner, seeing large sites moving back to us – and renewing with us – in the UK, in 2025 and 2024 – and the return of such a big customer with a big influence in the UK shows how the work of our teams and the enhancements we’re making for customers are seeing positive results.”
Nottingham Trent University chose to be with Water Plus as its water and wastewater services partner through the University of Essex Utility Supply and Energy Management Solutions framework managed by Dukefield Energy, for public sector organisations, moving all its 39 sites back to Water Plus.
More on the actions the university is taking, that have included increasing energy efficiency, can be found on the University website: www.ntu.ac.uk/about-us/strategy/sustainability/our-impact/carbon.
In other work with the public sector, schools are saving water in 2025 – through work by Water Plus, which is a UK Customer Satisfaction Award winner in 2025, after winning a UK Customer Satisfaction Award, from the Institute of Customer Service in 2023.
It’s also won a Global Gold for water management, in the Green World Environment Awards 2024, for work with customers around water approaches, increasing efficiencies and cutting carbon emissions. It has also received the Carbon Footprint Carbon Neutral Plus Standard, for its actions around decarbonisation and increasing green canopies, through tree-planting, for UK communities.*
In 2025, a water-saving visit to a school located and stopped an underground leak losing 6,492 litres of water an hour, equal to 25,968 cups of tea holding 250ml each. If the leak had run for 12 months, the estimated additional cost in wholesaler charges, for the school, could have been more than £170,000.
More on the water-savings in the public sector delivered in 2025 and 2024 are on the Public Sector Sustainability Association website here and here.
And find out more about increasing efficiencies through water management in the public sector in this webinar with the Public Sector Sustainability Association. There’s also a free to join 2025 webinar with the PSSA – with more details, on that, here.
Additional information:
NTU ranked 2nd in the world for sustainability by 2024 UI GreenMetric.
*Carbon Footprint Carbon Assessed and Carbon Neutral Plus for the 2023-2024 financial year, for Water Plus, for Scope 1 and Scope 2 and Scope 3 elements including employee commuting, work journey mileage, employee homeworking and water use, following carbon reduction actions. Supporting action to decarbonise, equivalent CO2e tonnes of emissions prevented through Carbon Footprint Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) projects.
Carbon Neutral Plus refers to 25% additional CO2e tonnes of emissions prevented, above Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions assessed by Carbon Footprint, alongside increasing green canopies for communities by increasing native UK tree-planting.
Water Plus is again working with Carbon Footprint in 2025 as part of driving further actions around reducing carbon emissions and supporting the UK’s progress on Net Zero. Its 2025 Environment and CSR report, showing its additional actions for the planet and communities, will be published this autumn on the Water Plus website.
Water Plus serves the most customer supply points in published data for England, September 2025, at more than 696,000.
