We played an active role in the communities we serve across Sussex, Kent, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

Our Community Volunteering Programme, which gives staff the opportunity to spend two days a year helping a charity or community project, had increased support.

A total of 170 days were spent on projects, including creating a garden at a school for the disabled, sprucing up a ship which offers sailing trips to disabled people and supporting scouting projects.

Our team of apprentices and graduates spent two days at East Clayton Farm in West Sussex, clearing and creating a garden at a former dairy farm which has been converted into independent housing units for young disabled adults.

Our Corporate Strategy team spent a day volunteering for Sussex Wildlife Trust, clearing Tilgate Forest in Crawley to encourage native species to develop.

In Sussex, we sponsored the Brighton Festival Children’s Parade for a third year as part of our We’re Backing Brighton campaign while we carried out the replacement of 57km of water mains in the city. More than 4,000 youngsters took part in the parade, which was led by our staff and a giant tap. We manned a drinking water stall and gave each child a reusable drinking water bottle.

We also supported the Brighton Festival Fringe by sponsoring Fringe City, a free outdoor event for the community and we sponsored education workshops at Brighton’s Theatre Royal for 90 schoolchildren.

Our sewer tours under the streets of Brighton continued to be popular, with 1,565 people visiting between April and October, including a choir, Channel Five documentary crew, charity Sparkles and Surprises, an English Heritage party, Scout group from Holland and pop star Suggs from Madness.

On the Isle of Wight, we supported Walk the Wight, the largest charity walk in the South. The walk raises funds for the Earl Mountbatten Hospice, which cares for terminally-ill people, by providing drinking water for the thousands of walkers on the route.