Hospitals Trust, academies and schools move to Water Plus, in first contracts through new national public sector framework
A wide range of public sector sites have been the first to choose their business water partner, under the latest Crown Commercial Service (CCS) 4-year framework for water services.
It’s the first through the new CCS framework, that launched this year, which CCS values at £2billion in total.The very first e-auction competition involved more than 50 sites, including schools, academies and hospital trusts.
Tony McHardy, Corporate Managing Director at Water Plus, whose team work across the public sector, said: “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 2024 – and these latest contracts show how the work of our teams and the enhancements we’re making for customers are seeing positive results.
“It’s a highly recognisable framework and we’re looking forward to working with the new public sector customers choosing to move to us and work with our dedicated team, who have years of experience with water and helping organisations with account management services.
“We’re delighted to win the first contracts on the latest Crown Commercial Service framework through a competitive tender – and provide our multi award-winning customer service offer.”
“We’re also proud to have been awarded a place, as a supplier, on the new CCS 4-year framework RM6306 Water, Wastewater and Ancillary Services 3, as a result of the quality of our bid submission. This includes our vast customer service experience, actions to help decarbonisation – and the actions we’ve been taking for communities,” Tony McHardy, from Water Plus, added.
In other work with the public sector, schools are saving water in 2024 – through work by Water Plus, which is a UK Customer Satisfaction Award Finalist in 2024, 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 2024, water-saving visits through Water Plus found 1.5 million litres of water could be saved over a year across four schools, from small low-cost water-saving devices – equal to 19,837 bath tubs, each filled with 80 litres of water, or 6.3 million cuppas, holding 250ml each – and cut more than £4,000 off water costs, helping school budgets and freeing more money up for pupils.
One of the schools saw the flow rate for taps, which had efficiency fittings added, reduce to an average of 3.8 litres per minute, compared to an average 6.7 litres per minute, which is a 43% water-saving.
Where less hot water is used at a site, less energy needs to be used, with the tap efficiency fittings helping to do just that.
Water is in Scope 3, for carbon emissions, so increasing water efficiency also helps with decarbonisation targets and progress towards Net Zero in the public sector.
£2billion value is for the total CCS 4-year framework. More on the water-savings in the public sector delivered in 2024 are on the Public Sector Sustainability Association website here. And find out more about increasing efficiencies through water management in the public sector in this webinar with the Public Sector Sustainability Association.
Additional information:
*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.
