We engage with suppliers through competitive sourcing processes to ensure they offer value for money and deliver high-quality goods and services.

We work closely with our supply chain to understand the importance of ethical procurement, evaluating their policies and practices in areas such as health and safety, cybersecurity, and insurance. We require appropriate certifications to ensure they are qualified to carry out the tasks at hand. 

We believe in treating our suppliers fairly and operate with transparency and integrity. We are a regulated company and our procurement processes are subject to the Utilties Contract Regulations (UCR) and the Procurement Policy Note - New Thresholds. This means that certain requirements based on type and anticipated value are legislated to be tendered competitively through Find a Tender - Crown Commercial Services or through Achilles Utilities Vendor Database, with a call for competition detailing our statement of need.

How requirements of this nature are competed, and the agreements which are awarded, are defined relative to the requirement. For requirements outside of the scope of UCR Thresholds, we will identify appropriate suppliers to engage with through various routes. This includes researching the market, engaging with trade associations, using our approved suppliers and from prior engagement for particular goods and services.

We evaluate our competitive processes using a variety of criteria, including financial viability, environmental implications, capability, quality, resilience and customer impact.

If you are interested in supplying to us, please email our procurement team and provide brief details about your product or service. For all UCR Threshold requirements, please visit Find a Tender - Crown Commercial Services.

Due to the number of enquiries that we receive, please note that we will only respond to emails where a service is required.

We acknowledge that suppliers may have innovations which are developed and/or evolve outside of our usual tender processes and may not be in response to a statement of need.  We are keen to support innovation of alternative and new solutions for the water sector. For further information, please refer to the details in our bid assessment framework.

If you have a product or service that you would like to be considered, please complete an application form and submit it to our procurement team.

We believe in paying our suppliers promptly and have committed to upholding and achieving the standards of the prompt payment code (PPC).

This means we will pay any undisputed valid invoice within the contracted terms; where we do not have a contract with a supplier, payment will be within 60 days of receiving a valid invoice.

We understand how important cash flow is to small businesses and in addition to the performance objectives in the PPC, we are committed to paying small businesses (that is, those with turnover less than £6.5 million) within the contracted terms or within 30 days of receiving a valid invoice.