SES Water achieves third prestigious biodiversity award

26/03/24

SES Water has successfully attained its third Biodiversity Benchmark award for land management from The Wildlife Trusts.  The award was achieved at part of its Bough Beech water treatment works – reaching SES Water’s commitment to have three accredited sites by 2025.

The Company continues to be the only UK water company to hold the coveted award. In addition to Bough Beech, SES Water also holds this accreditation at its Elmer and Fetcham Springs sites.

The progress made from start to finish, including two certifying audits of the site, was described by the Wildlife Trusts assessor as ‘quite exceptional’.

Over the past two years SES Water has developed a bespoke site Biodiversity Management Plan for Bough Beech, in partnership with Surrey Wildlife Trust. This was carefully designed to enhance the organic habitat in a sustainable way, as well as encouraging native species through installing bird and invertebrate boxes.

The plan includes grassland, woodland and hedgerow management techniques to encourage biodiversity, as well as a range of enhancements for particular species including habitat piles for reptiles, pond management for amphibians and boxes for birds. Biodiversity on the site will be regularly monitored for progress.

Some examples of species now thriving on the site include: Great Crested Newts, Fallow Deer, Red Kites, Woodpeckers, Tawny Owls, House Martins, Swifts and Swallows.

Overall, the ongoing work at Bough Beech is contributing to the Company’s wider estate plans to support its joint users with their enterprises, enhance conservation, provide managed access to nature and protect local heritage.

SES Water Sustainability Manager, Grace Wood-Lofthouse, said:

“This is a fantastic achievement, which the business is extremely proud of, and further underlines the ongoing importance we place on enhancing and protecting biodiversity across all of our operational sites.

“As we look towards our next regulatory planning period (2025-2030), when all water companies will have a common performance commitment for biodiversity improvement, we believe our Benchmark work across all our biodiversity sites and implementation of management protocols has given us the skills to ensure our biodiversity net gain proposals across 80% of our landholdings will be a success.”

Surrey Wildlife Trust’s Principal Ecologist, Claire Gibbs, said:

“SWT Ecology Services has been pleased to work with SES Water since 2018 in order to provide biodiversity advice and expertise. This has included survey and monitoring work as well as the production of Biodiversity Management Plans for the areas included within the Biodiversity Benchmark scheme.

“SES Water should be commended for its commitment to enhancing the biodiversity on these areas. It has shown a real commitment to achieving the high standards of the Biodiversity Benchmark scheme.”

The Wildlife Trusts’ Head of Corporate Partnerships, Emma Price Thomas, said:

“Congratulations to SES Water for achieving Biodiversity Benchmark certification for land management within its Bough Beech site in Kent.

“Achieving this challenging standard at a third site is testament to SES Water’s, and its employees’, commitment to protecting and improving biodiversity on their sites.

“We look forward to SES Water continuing to manage its land for wildlife and annually maintaining The Wildlife Trusts’ Biodiversity Benchmark at their sites for the long-term.”

ENDS

Notes to editors:

For further information, including interview requests, please email communications@seswater.co.uk.

SES Water supplies water to over 750,000 people in east Surrey, and parts of West Sussex, west Kent and south London. Our supply area is 322 square miles (835 sq km) extending from Morden and South Croydon in the north to Gatwick Airport in the south and from Cobham, Leatherhead and Dorking in the west to Edenbridge and Bough Beech in the east. Groundwater supplies provide 85 per cent of our water, with 15 per cent being extracted from one reservoir at Bough Beech near Edenbridge.

Biodiversity Benchmark www.biodiversitybenchmark.org: The Wildlife Trusts have created the Biodiversity Benchmark to encourage organisations to manage their land for wildlife and it is the first scheme to recognise continual biodiversity improvement of land. The Benchmark is flexible and adaptable, so that it can be applied to any organisation which manages land, from businesses through to local authorities, service utilities, the NHS, developers and charities. The Wildlife Trusts’ Biodiversity Benchmark is designed to recognise biodiversity improvements on an organisation’s landholdings; it is not an endorsement of an organisation’s activities or a measurement of its broader environmental performance or impacts.