Welsh Water’s parent company, Glas Cymru Holdings Cyf, is today celebrating 15 years since buying the water and sewerage company on 11th May 2001 and creating the first - and still only - not-for-profit water company in England and Wales.

Glas Cymru has confirmed that it has recently modernised its governance structure in March 2016 to enable the company to respond more effectively to changes within the water and wastewater sectors. It also reaffirmed its commitment to safeguarding Welsh Water’s not-for-profit model.

Glas Cymru was formed in 2000 by Welsh Water’s current Chief Executive, Chris Jones, and former Managing Director, Nigel Annett, so that they could buy and manage Welsh Water which provides water and wastewater services across most of Wales, Herefordshire and parts of Deeside.

Despite significant interest from other international companies and banks, Glas Cymru succeeded in buying Welsh Water from Western Power Distribution in May 2001, financed by a £1.9 billion bond issue - the largest ever, non-Government-backed, corporate bond issue - named as the world’s top deal in 2001 by International Financial Review.

The buyout of Welsh Water in 2001 remains unique in the UK, making the firm into the UK’s only not-for-profit water company – not answerable to shareholders, only customers.

As the fifth largest company in Wales, Welsh Water employs nearly 3,000 staff and contributes around £1 billion a year to the Welsh economy. The firm also supplies people outside of Wales – with households in parts of the Wirral and Cheshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire – amounting to around three million customers in total.

With no shareholders, Glas Cymru said the company’s not-for-profit model has enabled the company to do much more for its customers than would otherwise be possible over the past 15 years, including:

• investing over £4.5 billion in its water and wastewater services which is amongst the biggest private investment programme ever undertaken in the area
• returning over £300 million to customers in the form of ‘customer dividends’ through reducing bills, accelerating investment and helping customers who struggle to pay their bills
• helping more customers than ever before, around 50,000, who struggle to pay their bills through its range of tariffs, with plans increase this to over 100,000 by 2020
• improving drinking water and wastewater services with the company coming second in Ofwat’s Customer satsifaction Survey for the second year running in 2015-16
• helping ensure that Wales now has around a third of the UK’s Blue Flags – despite only having 15% of the coastline – which benefit local economies
• securing the best credit ratings in the utilities sector which means it can borrow money more cheaply with savings reinvested for the benefit of customers.

In 2011 Glas Cymru’s international credit rating became the best of the UK water sector – exceeding that of some countries.

Welsh Water’s Chief Executive, Chris Jones said:

 “Whilst we are proud to be different to every other water company, we have always demanded the highest possible standards on behalf of customers and also securing value for money. We focus relentlessly on the three million people we serve and with all our gains going directly to customers, this has enabled us to significantly improve the services that we provide since 2001 so that we now lead the industry on many of the measures that matter most to customers. The Glas Cymru model proves that there really is an alternative way of providing the most essential of public services”