DELIVERING WHAT MATTERS Annual Integrated Report & Accounts 2020/21 Northern Ireland Water Annual Integrated Report and Accounts For the year ended 31 March 2021 Laid before the Northern Ireland Assembly under Article 276 of the Water and Sewerage Services (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 by the Department for Infrastructure on 27 July 2021 About this report Tell us what you think of our report We hope that this report will be of use to all our stakeholders and would welcome This report aims to tell the story of how NI Water feedback to develop our future reporting. provides the water for life we all rely on to thrive. Please direct any feedback to the Business Reporting Manager, Finance and Regulation Directorate. Our contact details are on the back cover of this report. Reporting what matters Our Annual Integrated Report and Accounts aims to meet the information needs of all our stakeholders and tell the story of how we are delivering what matters by creating and Dr Leonard J. P. O’Hagan CBE DL sustaining value over the short, medium and long term. This value does not just focus Chair of the Board on financial capital but extends across all six capitals or pools of resources – financial 23 June 2021 (financial efficiency and resilience), natural (plants, animals, water, soils and the eco- system services they provide), social (stakeholder relationships), human (talent, health and wellbeing), manufactured (pipes, treatment works, plant and equipment, IT and offices) and intellectual capital (knowledge and processes) to ensure that we are profiting from creating sustainable solutions for people and the planet. We have included information that we believe is material to our stakeholders and presented it in a way that we believe is fair, balanced and understandable. We listen to our stakeholders through multiple communication channels and have drawn on this regular engagement to develop a matrix approach on reporting what matters (page 28). We either include the important matters in this report or sign post the reader to other reports and information sources. We believe this approach meets the requirements of company law, the corporate governance arrangements within our Management Statement and Financial Memorandum, IFRS and the International <IR> Framework, and that we go beyond those requirements where we feel it is particularly helpful to do so and where it can be done while still keeping it an easy read. Integrated Report This Annual Integrated Report and Accounts has been prepared and presented in accordance with the International <IR> Framework published by the International Integrated Reporting Council. Integrated reporting is about telling a simple and concise story of how organisations create and sustain value over the short, medium and long term. The Board, which is responsible for the integrity of this report, has considered the preparation and presentation of this report and concluded that it has been prepared and presented in accordance with the Framework. Northern Ireland Water is a trademark of Northern Ireland Water Limited, incorporated in Northern Ireland, Registered Number NI054463. © Northern Ireland Water Limited copyright 2021. This information is licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. To view this licence visit: www.nationalarchives. gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ Cautionary note This document contains links to other websites. Any information Any enquiries regarding this publication should be addressed contained on these websites has not been subject to audit. to the Business Reporting Manager using the contact details on Refer to the Independent Auditors’ Report on page 204 for the back cover of this report. details on which areas of this report have been subject to audit. Contents Strategic About this report 4 Report Welcome 10 Climate emergency 12 About NI Water 14 How we create value 16 Business performance 18 Delivering what matters despite COVID-19 22 External environment 24 Listening to you 26 Reporting on what matters 28 Business strategy 29 Delivering our strategic priorities 30 Principal threats and opportunities 72 Our finances explained 88 Financial performance 90 Governance Corporate governance 98 Directors’ report 112 Directors’ remuneration report 123 Statement of directors’ responsibilities 129 Statutory Statutory accounts 130 Accounts Independent auditors’ report 204 P7 St Patrick’s Primary School Mayobridge, Fofanny area, climate competition winning poster Read more at https://www.niwater.com/climatechange/news/local-school-engagement/ 6 NI Water Annual Integrated Report and Accounts 2020/21 7 Strategic Report Strategic Report This Strategic Report is produced in accordance with The Companies Act 2006 (Strategic Report and Directors’ Report) Regulations 2013. Sewer improvement work in West and South Belfast 8 NI Water Annual Integrated Report and Accounts 2020/21 9 Strategic Report accept the PC21 Final Determination, there is restore biodiversity. We believe that our Welcome support and continuing commitment to fund infrastructure, which includes significant land the determination. holdings and over 3,000 grid connected sites across Northern Ireland, can play a The Northern Ireland Executive gave NI strategically important role in helping society Water high profile within the New Decade, Building back better to meet these challenges. Our big, bold ideas New Approach deal, stating that it will invest were launched in 2020/21 and include nature Water companies sit at the heart of society and provide urgently in wastewater infrastructure. We based solutions such as planting one million an essential service with considerable health dimensions. have also been encouraged by the Ministerial trees and restoring our peat bogs; building Our abstraction and sewage treatment also have major Advisory Panel on Infrastructure’s Report more renewables on our land; kick-starting our environmental consequences, and our infrastructure is a which highlighted the need to reform hydrogen economy; and providing sources of foundation for sustainable economic growth. It’s time to infrastructure planning and delivery and warmth for district heating schemes. start properly funding our critical infrastructure to build we can directly support delivery of seven back better. of the nine outcomes in the Programme of Crystallising the full benefits from these ideas Government draft outcomes framework. We will require changes to Government policy, also understand that the NI Audit Office is funding and regulation to rethink infrastructure preparing a public interest report on NI Water as a total interconnected system rather Delivering despite COVID-19 wastewater infrastructure, which adds to inform future infrastructure delivery. It’s than isolated silos. These benefits include complexity and significant inefficiency to time to take the difficult decisions to properly ensuring that our economy is productive and The COVID-19 pandemic is a stark the delivery of longer term asset resilience, fund our critical infrastructure. competitive in a decarbonised world. reminder of the fragility of our societal and risks deterioration in levels of service for economic systems, and challenges us to customers, and is leading to inadequate Supporting a sustainable Creating a more prosperous think about becoming more resilient not environmental protection through increased just to pandemics but to other threats, sewer flooding and pollution. revolution society known and unknown. NI Water’s goal is to ensure we have a Like the industrial revolution which As society begins to contemplate what Like most organisations, NI Water faced modern, efficient and sustainable business. fundamentally changed our economy ‘normal’ may now look like, the sustainable limitations to usual ways of working following While chronic underfunding of NI Water is and wider society in previous centuries, delivery of clean water and sanitation remains the introduction of lockdown restrictions. an urgent issue, we are working hard at a the changes required to decarbonise our vital in the face of rising challenges such as This challenge was coupled in 2020/21 with local level to find solutions to enable Councils economy, become climate resilient and health pandemics, climate change and the the driest Spring on record and an increase and developers to progress their vision and restore biodiversity over this century loss of biodiversity. in household demand for drinking water. We facilitate future economic development. represent nothing short of a sustainable revolution. This will require a colossal NI Water stands ready to deliver. Our plan will activated our major incident and business NI Water is ready to provide engineering start to address the underinvestment in our continuity plans to ensure that over 700 staff solutions to short-term constraints where joined up effort across the public, private and voluntary sectors to rethink policy infrastructure and the damage it has caused were able to switch to working from home. possible, however we must face the to our economy and the natural environment. Protocols were initiated for staff deemed inescapable reality that our infrastructure development, decision making and funding in order to help our society meet these We have consistently demonstrated the essential to frontline operations, within the needs to be properly funded over the next importance of this investment to enable laboratories, networks or treatment works to quarter of a century to address this problem. challenges and address