The health and safety of our employees, contractors, customers and the public remained a priority.

For the third year running, we were awarded the prestigious President’s Award by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). The award is presented to companies that demonstrate outstanding performance in health and safety at work by receiving 10 or more consecutive RoSPA Gold Awards.

We recorded a reduction of nearly 40 per cent in the number of accidents reportable to the Health and Safety Executive and our contractors recorded six million accident-free hours.

We continued our Aim for Zero Injuries initiative to donate £2 for hazards or ‘near misses’ reported to our health and safety team, raising £14,000 for the life-saving air ambulance services in Sussex, Kent and Hampshire.

More than 250 operational staff attended our annual conference during Health and Safety Week, which focused on safe maintenance.

We ran an inspection of our company vehicles and South Downs Bikes held a safety workshop for cyclists and a bike safety check at our headquarters in West Sussex.

We launched a competition for our water and wastewater teams to raise the profile of health and safety and we completed a surveillance scheme to monitor the health of staff on our sites.

All employees were offered a free seasonal flu jab, which included the swine flu vaccine, and we also shared tips and advice on good posture, nutrition and the benefits of personal fitness.