Welcome to today's United Utilities Group Plc ESG event. My name is Jordan, and I'll be coordinating your call today. Joined by the question tab. I'm now going to hand over to Phil Aspin, Chief Financial Officer to begin. Phil, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's presentation. Unfortunately, due to a recent family bereavement, our Chief Executive, Steve Mogfred, is unable to join us. I'll be hosting this morning's presentation and will be joined by colleagues who I'll introduce shortly. Here at United Utilities, our strategy to deliver long term sustainable improvements in service we provide is clear and enduring.
Our approach to ESG is central to this strategy, driving us to deliver our services in an environmentally sustainable, economically beneficial and socially responsible manner. Putting ESG at the heart of our strategy ensures that we're able to enhance And resilience of our services deliver on our purpose and underpin the robust and sustainable financial performance of the business. In today's presentation, we'll provide more detail on how this approach delivers better outcomes for customers and the environment, drives efficiency and allows us to retain and attract the best talent by delivering on issues that matter to our employees. This enables us to provide the best possible service to customers and ensures that we are well placed to continue to create long term sustainable value for all stakeholders. Next slide, please.
Our purpose is to provide great water and water for the Northwest. This is why we exist, and it's what drives our approach to focus on what matters to our stakeholders. We have 6 key stakeholder groups shown here on the slide. They not only influence what we do, but also benefit from the value that we create. We look after the interest of these stakeholders and create value by understanding what matters to them through strong and constructive relationships.
Our work puts us at the heart of our communities and we invest to support them in becoming stronger. We've developed a deep understanding of our customers and supporting care for them while also providing a reliable and trusted service. We recognize our employees are critical to the success of our organization and we've created a great place for all to work. We have a deep and enduring relationship with the environment and seek to protect and enhance it. For our investors, we deliver a sustainable return and adopt An appropriate strategy with ESG very much at the heart.
And we work closely in partnership with our suppliers with our activities supporting almost 18,000 jobs in the supply chain. Next slide please. By focusing on what matters to our stakeholders, we create a link to ESG measures, and we firmly believe there's a close relationship between ESG performance and investor value. This slide shows a framework for how our stakeholder approach feeds through to ESG measures. And many of the examples shown here are things that you will already be familiar with, which we will cover during the course of the presentation today.
I won't go through all the detail here. Needless to say, there's a vast number of examples and case studies we could take you through to demonstrate our strong track record of leading on ESG matters. This is not something that's new to us, and it's something that is very much part of our DNA and has been for many, many years. Today, we will only be able to give you a snapshot of our achievements today and our plans for the future that builds on the summary we published last September. The link is on the slide to the book that we published last September.
I hope to be discussing this topic with many of you in the coming months. Next slide, please. So joining me today on the call is Joe Harrison, our Environmental Planning and Innovation Director. Joe will cover the environmental performance, including our long term planning and our approach to climate change adaptation and mitigation. Also with us today is Chris Matthews, our Head of Sustainability.
Chris will cover the S in ESG in terms of how we engage with communities, customers and employees, And Chris will also draw a connection to the reporting in our latest annual reporting accounts. And finally, I'll cover our approach in terms of responsible financing And our best practice governance before summarizing and concluding and taking Q and A at the end. So to begin with, I'll hand over to Jo. Next slide, please.
Thank you very much, Phil, and good morning, everybody. So my name is Jo Harrison. I'm the Director of Environment Planning and Innovation at United Utilities. And today, I'm going to take you through the environmental aspects of the work that we're doing. If we go on to the next slide, please.
Today, we'll be sharing an update on our latest performance and plans that demonstrate our strategic leadership in the water sector and beyond. We've got a long standing focus on the ESG agenda, and it's embedded across the business. We're really pleased to have delivered leading environmental performance this year, I'll take you through some of the details of that in a moment. Our ethos of systems thinking is at the heart of our approach and we balance the delivery of investment with Technology, data, nature and partnership to be able to deliver best value across the region. We're also increasingly focused on resource to lead on our approach to climate change through decarbonization and climate change adaptation.
And all of that is part of being an efficient and effective business in the short term and a resilient business in the long term mitigating the impacts of climate change, population growth and changing politics and environment. We move on to the next slide, please. Every year, the Environment Agency assesses the water companies based on their environmental performance in the year. EA compares against a number of different measures, including pollution incidents, compliance with our permit and delivery of our investment program. We're really proud at UU that we've been a leading company for the last 5 years.
And last year, we secured the highest status, a 4 star status for 3rd year in the last 5. We're only a handful of one of a handful of companies to get a green status across the board, And we're the only listed water company to get all green across all of our measures. We're particularly proud of our against solutions and serious pollution incidents and being a leader in the industry. If we move on to the next slide, I'll explain a little bit about our strategy. So we're delivering frontier performance in a number of areas, but our performance on pollution is by far the best area that we are focused on.
We've achieved 0 pollution incidents for the last 2 years. And overall, we've seen a 31% reduction in overall pollution incidents. We've produced a plan, which we call our Pollution Incident Reduction Plan that's signed off and reviewed by the board on an annual basis. And our strategy has got 3 key areas that we're focused on. The first is through delivering our approach to systems thinking, So proliferating the use of technology within our sewer systems in order to be able to understand the performance on a day to day basis and be able to drive and improve performance before we have an impact on the environment.
The second is focusing on people and culture. We've embedded ESG at the heart of the way that we operate throughout our business, and the focus on driving down pollution incidents Has been a key aspect of delivering the performance that we've seen. And finally, we have a long term approach, which is based on planning and maintenance. So we lead what we call a place based planning approach, looking holistically at our assets and the environment in which they operate to be able to understand the best long term investment requirements to drive pollution performance in the future. If I move on to the next slide, During AMP 7, we are delivering £730,000,000 worth of investment that's directly related to improving the environment.
This will see the improvement of 1500 kilometers of rivers over that period and the removal of over 500 tons of phosphorus each year. And we are taking a combined approach to thinking about how we deliver that improvement. So we are balancing traditional investment and improving our assets, but also doing that alongside delivery systems thinking with delivery of technology and natural solutions be able to balance and deliver most efficiently and effectively. There's a growing momentum externally for tighter environmental standards. We are seeing both the climate and biodiversity emergencies driving political regulation and thinking.
And we think this is essential for the resilience of public services and the wider benefit of reversing biodiversity loss and supporting public health and boosting the economy. Deferred's 25 year environmental plan It will be the fundamental driver for investment in the future. It's a response to our changing regulatory environment, the impact of Brexit, And it strengthens our environmental ambitions. Our tightening environmental regulation brings us opportunities for more investment and driving growth in the future. We move on to the next slide.
As a water company, we are entirely reliant on the natural environment. The natural environment is being significantly impacted by climate change and other drivers, and we need to focus on ensuring that we have a stable environment to deliver efficient water We've got a long standing history at UU in working across our catchments to be able to deliver and to ensure that we have a sustainable, resilient environment for the future. Significant projects that we've delivered across our approach to Stamps include rewilding activities at Wyldennerdale, where we've delivered a 20 year program of rewilding the catchment in order to secure resilience and focus on water quality. And we're rolling out that approach now across our Fillmore and Haweswater catchments, which are critical for water supply to Greater Manchester. But it's not just about our water catchment.
We're now focusing much more broadly on the wider natural environment and how we can balance The impacts of all of our operations across those environments. So we developed our new approach called Catchment Systems Thinking back in 2015. So So we're really trying to sort of think about the environment in a holistic way, looking at how we manage the sort of combined impacts of flooding, driving water quality improvement and securing water resources for the future. So we're delivering the widest possible application of systems thinking. We're managing our catchments holistically and we're delivering work with partners in order to be able to drive those environmental improvements and delivering better overall outcomes more efficiently and more sustainably for the future.
Two critical examples that support our approach is the work that we're doing on the River Petrol and the River Wire. In the River Petrol, we're working with other industries such as Nestle, We're delivering improvements to agriculture across the regions to remove the need for phosphate removal at our treatment works and replacing the need for energy and chemical intensive In the River Wire, we're working with the insurance industry to look at how we can deliver natural flood management to reduce the need to invest in hard engineering to control flooding. And all of this has been the basis for our approach to Ampeg And we're extending our Velocity Attachment Systems thinking to think about place based planning for AMPA 8 investments. And there are 3 strategic catchments where we believe that the delivery of such a joined up and comprehensive approach will really drive the need for for investment and efficiency moving forward. One of those is the River Eden in Cumbria, where we're seeing significant growth in the catchment, A city in Carlisle that experiences flooding and very significant environmental improvement needs in the river heaters.
Another is the wire catch where we have complex and relationships between flooding that occurs within the catchment and the management of water resources and environmental improvement. But by most far, the most complex and exciting is the work that we are undertaking in Greater Manchester. And if we move on to the next slide.
We've got a
significant ambition along with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority to improve the water environment in Greater Manchester to reduce flooding and secure our climate resilient water sources. This is a significant opportunity for us to invest across the city And we're proposing a large multi AMP investment that needs to deliver a radically new approach to managing water across the city. And we've already started that approach in AMP7. So we are already investing over £90,000,000 improving treatment processes at Bolton Wastewater Treatment Works. And through the Green Recovery, we've secured a further €44,000,000 to invest at Berry Wastewater Treatment Works to drive environmental improvements.
But as part of our Act 7 negotiations, we negotiated with the Environment Agency, one of the country's first flexible permits. And this is an opportunity for us to optimize the way that we manage our assets across North Manchester to be able to balance the delivery of solutions and to optimize dynamically the performance of the assets to achieve the environmental outcomes that are required. This new innovative approach I'm the 2nd only in the country, enabled us to save over £100,000,000 in efficiencies. It's enabled us to reduce carbon emissions, chemical usage and actually to deliver more environmental improvement than ever before. But this is just the start of the work that we want to do.
And looking to the future and into Ampek, we're proposing that we invest more than €500,000,000 on delivering combined improvements to manage further water, improve water quality and secure water resources in the region. And that will sit alongside the work that we're doing on dynamic network management We're investing over $100,000,000 in improving our performance on overflows and flooding while striving efficiency and performance. We move on to the next slide. All of those examples show the importance of natural capital to our region and to the way that we deliver our business. Natural Capital and the assessment and understanding of it is a key critical requirement of the government's environment bill on the ZECRA 25 year environment plan.
And so 3 years ago, we came together with 18 partners across the region to build a combined natural capital account for the North West region. That enables us to have a common baseline and understanding of the environmental condition in the North West. It allows us to work with stakeholders, both NGOs and local authorities, to deliver joined up planning to ensure that our investment opportunities align and deliver value through efficiency. We're also working in partnership with those organizations to deliver multiple benefits. The value to us and wider society of the North West environment is over €135,000,000,000 And we are very, very keen and very focused and working together with our partners and stakeholders to deliver joined up plans to drive that environmental improvement even further.
We move on to the next slide. One of our biggest risks that we're facing is the changing climate. And we've got a very strong approach to resilience, which was recognized by OSPOT and other regulators through APR 19 submission. Climate change brings a range of risks us in the Northwest. It will bring drier summers, wetter winters, more stormy conditions and a greater risk of landslips and land and catchment fires.
So we're focused very focused on understanding the risk that climate change brings across the business. We've completely embedded climate change in our risk based approach across the region, and we're in the final stages of finalizing our climate change adaptation We've got a huge focus on operational resilience. And over the past number of years, we've been strengthening our operational response through the ICC and through our deployment of systems thinking. Our use of technology, of monitoring and modeling and understanding the real time performance of our assets has been a critical aspect of our focus on operational resilience. But we're also focusing on the longer term, and driving resilience will be a key feature as to pass our PR24 unpaid plan.
Some examples that we're particularly wanting to focus on is at the securing of water resources across the region. We've already seen a huge focus on reducing demand, This is a critical aspect of how we'll be resilient in the future. We've already driven down on our demand as an organization from 2.5 megaliters a day to $17.50 And by 2,050, we hope to secure a further saving of 200 megaliters a day. We're spending €290,000,000 over the next these 5 years on reducing leakage to see a 25 a 15% reduction by 2025 And a 50% reduction by 2,050. And similarly, we're focusing on customer behavior and trying to drive down per capita consumption from a current 140 liters per head today to 115 liters by 2,050.
And all of this enables us to ensure that we have resilient water for the future. We're also focused on playing our part nationally, and we lead the group called Water Resources West, which is building the super regional plan for water resources across the West of England. As part of that plan, we're looking at opportunities for water trading. And we're currently working with other companies to look at an opportunity to transfer water from the River 7 to the River 10, Transferring 300 to 500 Megaliters a day, investment of around £800,000,000 to £1,000,000,000 that we might see in our paid. Moving on to the next slide, I want to focus a little bit on carbon.
So we have very bold, clear and transparent plans on driving down our carbon use. We report openly and we have the 2nd year of a TCSD report as part of our annual report. We've made very good progress in driving down emissions already. We've reduced emissions by over 70%, and we generate 25% of our energy needs. So we've committed to achieve the industry target of net 0 by 2,030, which is 42% reduction in real terms.
And we've also signed up to achieving 100% reduction by 2,050. We've made big commitments around renewable energy, electricity And so we will by the end of this year, we'll have 100% of our electricity will be renewable energy. We've also made commitments to ensure that our fleet of electric vehicles is achieved by 100% by 2028. We're planting over a 1,000,000 trees to create 550 hectares of woodland and we're restoring over 1,000 hectares a peak. Great opportunity for us with our considerable landholding.
And finally, we're committed to assessing SOAP 3 emissions by 2021. This is something that we've already achieved, and I'll move on to that in my next slide. So we were the 1st water company to have asset So 3 emission targets approved by the SBCI. We've also set ourselves challenging targets on emissions as well as engagements. It's critical that we focus on the science based approach as a real endorsement of the approach that we want to take.
And we're already engaging with the supply chain on setting these new targets, ensuring that we're delivering in line with our targets that we've set. We're ensuring transparency and legitimacy across our agenda. And we've got more details on our annual report and our website, including our expanded TCFD section. And now I'll move on to Chris.
Many thanks, Joe. Good morning, everybody. I'm Chris Matthews. I'm Head of Sustainability. I'm delighted to talk about the S Of ESG.
If we can have the next slide, please. For us, the S of ESG, that social has 3 key elements. These are communities, customers and employees. And over the next 10 minutes or so, I'll share with you some key highlights. For communities, it's about understanding their makeup and the stakeholders that represent them, engaging proactively to yield business benefits by, for example, creating partnerships.
Over the last 5 years, we have developed a deeper understanding of the diversity of customers we serve And this is now driving better business performance. A motivated workforce is key to delivering strong performance. And it's clear that our focus on health, safety and well-being, digital skills and diversity and inclusion is making a difference. I'm going to finish with a brief overview of our approach to reporting and the importance of openness and transparency. Next slide, please.
When it comes to communities, our purpose places us at the heart of local communities where our customers and employees live and work. Understanding these communities and the stakeholders that represent them and engaging proactively ensure support for and the efficient delivery of our capital projects. The approach we adopted to public consultation for our Haweswater Aqueduct Resilience Program, or HARB, illustrates. COVID prevented traditional face to face consultation methods, so we adopted a virtual approach to understand community concerns and to address them. We received twice as many responses as normal, and 69% of stakeholders supported our plans.
This approach to community engagement builds social capital, where developing trusted relationships brings benefits to both parties. The proof of pudding is actually seen in West Cumbria, where we secured unanimous planning permission for our GBP 300,000,000 scheme in one of the most beautiful parts of the UK. A 2 year concerted effort of focused stakeholder engagement meant we avoided costly planning delays. Our goal is to achieve the same outcome for Harp. We invest in community partnerships to tackle issues more effectively, to find new solutions to the challenges we face and to access new funding streams, Driving efficiency and a better overall outcome.
This summer, we signed 2 memoranda of understandings with the RSPB and the Rivers Trust, And the slide here shows Steve Monfort meeting the CEO of the RSPB at Salisbury. These are partners that are held in really high esteem by local communities with a broad membership base, so enhancing the credibility of what we do. Through such partnerships, we leveraged additional funding. Last year, for every £1 we invested in the partnership, we secured a further £7 Sadly, there are too many people in the North West who struggle to make the first step onto the career ladder. And our region is characterized by low levels of social mobility, yet there are definitely talented people out there.
Last October, we hosted the sector's 1st social mobility summit attended by over 100 organizations to catalyze business action on this important topic. We launched our Opportunity Action Plan to encourage others to do more. We're supporting the government's Kickstart program by providing 250 placements in various Across the North West, each kickstarter has a dedicated skills coach and will receive job related and employability skills training. Already some young people have joined the program and have been offered permanent paid employment with us. Our commitment to young people has continued throughout the pandemic.
Just this month, we've welcomed 70 apprentices and graduates to the company. We've made good progress too in recruiting apprenticeships from more diverse backgrounds. 31% of apprentices starting with this month are female and 18% are from ethnic minorities. Next slide, please. As many of you will know, the Northwest is one of the most economically and socially deprived parts of the country, with 41% of the most private areas in our region.
By understanding our customers and targeting health, we also help the business too. That's why we put real focus on our affordability and vulnerability schemes, which include a suite of industry leading payment assistance schemes. We've embraced innovation to drive efficiency and better outcomes for customers. Typical household builds have been reduced by 5% this year in real terms, And we've committed £71,000,000 of shareholder support over our 7. 200,000 customers now benefit from our health schemes and over 133,000 have signed up to Priority Services, for which we have retained British Standard Certification, which is an ODI measure.
We were the 1st company to secure regulatory approval to extend our social tariff. An additional £15,000,000 has supported Over 73,000 customers, about 62% more than originally estimated. And alongside CCW, for playing a leading role in advocating for a national social tariff. Innovation has a crucial role to play in reducing the stress and stigma of debt. We are the 1st company to share data with the DWP and the local electricity distribution company, enhancing We're piloting a real time income verification tool that streamlines eligibility for social tariffs, Which lowers the cost and overheads.
And we're the 1st company to roll out an open banking solution for such applications, And the early evidence indicates this is a more efficient approach. So it's clear our efforts to embrace digital are improving service, enhancing experience and reducing costs. And it's pleasing that over 1,000,000 customers engage with us digitally, and we rated 4.7 out of 5 on the App Store. Our own in house app development capability with agile approach has created the VoIP property app, which has reduced the number of voids by 93,000 and led to an ODI award. All of these strong foundations mean we have one of the healthiest balance sheets in the sector with a very clean debt book and Phil will touch on this later.
This approach is building social capital with customers and regulators alike and driving high levels of customer satisfaction, As can be seen in our CMX and Demex scores, where we're unique amongst the listed companies in earning a reward for both. Next slide, please. Without motivated employees, we cannot deliver for our stakeholders. We treat our employees well, which means we can rely on them when we need them most. This also relates to how we treat our supply chain, supports us through incidents.
Last year, we achieved an engagement rate 89%. That's 5% of both the U. K. High performance norm. And it's all delivered in part because of our focus on health and safety, where we had 15% improvement in accident frequency rate.
Such high levels of engagement are a prerequisite for sustaining the business success, And we score 4.5 out of 5 on Glassdoor, and this comes from former and current employees. Engagement is an important aspect Fulfilling our purpose to do more. For instance, we build social capital with our employees if they can see that we're investing in their safety and well-being that they can return home safely to their loved ones every night. Becoming a digital utility requires a different skill set. We're ahead of the curve on this And I've evolved training to enable us to harness innovation and deploy solutions quickly.
We want our people to develop their skills and knowledge, and we support them with the most effective technology. And our training center is the only one in the sector currently governed by Ofsted with a good overall rating. We've introduced artificial intelligence and robotics into areas such as leakage detection, maintenance prioritization and back office activity where processes are becoming more efficient And service to customers has improved. For example, with 25 robots carrying out nearly half a million tasks, Embracing this technology requires a different skill set for our people. The strength of the digital economy in the North West presents an opportunity and advantage for us given the importance of recruiting and retain Capable employees to underpin our digital transformation.
We're confident we can source the employees we need as we develop our in house capability. This is a fundamental part of our systems thinking approach. And as we invest this way of working ever more deeply, it provides the basis from which we can be a sector leader. We carefully monitor other people related trends and issues and feedback from colleagues and active response. That is why we are fully committed enhancing equality, diversity and inclusion.
Our 5 employee networks our 5 employee diversity networks, I should say, have a growing membership of 7.30 people And play a pivotal role in providing insight, raising awareness and giving support to colleagues. Each is sponsored by a member of the executive team. The only signs are promising. 17% of our offences are female. That's double the industry average.
We feature in the top 1% of 15,000 companies across Europe And the highest wastewater company in the Diversity Leaders ranking survey by Statista and the Feet. We've achieved inclusion in the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index. And our gender pay gap continues to reduce important progress given the challenge we face to bring diversity into the sector. And once we've finished completed all of our foundational activities, such as gathering comprehensive data about our workforce, We will implement the necessary actions in a targeted way and set improvement targets with confidence on our D and I agenda. Next slide, please.
Phil will talk about governance more broadly. But before he does, I wanted to give an overview of what laid behind our approach to 2021 annual report. As reporting trends evolve, we see our annual report as our shop window and over the last decade has moved from a pure financial report to one that provides strategic and performance oversight. We pulled our ESG approach together in this annual in this integrated annual report. This year, we decided to think it around purpose.
As you can see from the slide, our purpose to provide Great Water and more for the North West has 3 component parts And sets out to provide evidence for stakeholders to judge that we are fulfilling our purpose. I take each in turn great water, simply about delivering service excellence. For some stakeholders, that's about an ODI reward. For those, it's about fewer supply interruptions. And more, This focuses on the value add we bring to all the stakeholders we serve.
We've identified 50 measures across 6 stakeholder cash uses for AMP7 to track how we generate value so stakeholders can have confidence in our approach. And for the North West, this brings a clear focus on the region we serve. We are clear that Water Makes the North West, and we are committed to engagement with relevant regional stakeholders to address the water management issues here in our region. In part, our approach was guided by broader investor feedback about the importance of having trust and confidence in what company's say. We noted the findings of a recent survey of 4,600 individual investors across Europe and the U.
S, which found many believe corporates have a responsibility We are meeting ESG pledges. But the survey also found that investors had difficulty trusting ESG claims at face value and comparing them with peers. While we can set out evidence that we are fulfilling our purpose, it has more impact when others draw that conclusion. This year, we revised performance pages in our annual report to demonstrate value creation for key stakeholders and provide a summary across several of the independent ESG indices where we perform strongly and consistently across almost all of them. Phil will say more about this shortly.
Our approach to the 2021 report builds on the evolution of our approach simply since we first embraced integrated reporting in 2015. Each year, we seek to build on improvements made the previous year, as can be seen in the way that we presented our TCFD report for the 2nd year. And with that, I'll hand over to Phil.
Thanks, Chris, and good morning again, everyone. Next slide, please. I'm now going to talk about our responsible approach to financing in corporate governance. While much of the material I'll talk through is not new news, I think you'll find it helpful for me to frame our activity in the context of ESG, so You can see how delivering for all stakeholders supports our approach to long term sustainable financial performance. I'll start with an overview And then consider a couple of examples.
1st, where we have secured attractive funding based on our ESG credentials. And then, how our responsible approach to pensions And the pension's journey has put us in a strong position, which supports our ability to pay future dividends. Lastly, I'll touch on our best practice approach to corporate governance. The next slide please. We are one of the leaders, if not the leader in the sector terms of financial resilience and governance.
Long term financial resilience starts with a robust balance sheet and a prudent approach to financial risk management. We have a clear and transparent approach that has served us well over a long period. We've board approved policies around capital risk at the level of debt to RCD, alongside liquidity risk and market risk, I. E. Interest rates and inflation.
These policies mitigate risk for all stakeholders, making the business more resilient while supporting the delivery of financing outperformance for the benefit of shareholders. For many years, we've maintained a stable RCV gearing consistent with our target range of 65% to 65%. And at March 21, we were comfortably within our range of 62%. Maintaining this position of strength ensures we are resilient to shocks and supports our stable A3 credit rating with Moody's. As a result, we retain efficient access to debt capital markets through all economic cycles.
And when we do issue debt, we are able to lock in rates to compare favorably with the price of your assumptions and deliver financing outperformance. As you've heard already today, our business is intrinsically linked to the environment in which we operate. This provides us with a great opportunity to raise environmental funding and link our debt issuance to projects that protect and enhance the environment. And finally, on financial resilience, pensions is an issue which is now receiving greater regulatory attention as pension liabilities are effectively debt. This is not an area of concern for us as our defined benefit pension schemes are fully funded on a low dependency basis, which means that we no longer have to make prepare contributions.
And given our well hedged position, we expect this to remain the case in the future. On governance more broadly, We consistently adhere to the highest levels of corporate governance, accountability and transparency, and we were early adopters of best practice in this area. When we expose ourselves to public assessment through the various indices that I know you'll be very familiar with, we are found to be one of the sector's top performers. Next slide, please. Now turning to our ability to raise environmental funding.
This is not something that's new to us, having raised environmental funding for many, many years, principally from the European Investment Bank. We remain the European Investment Bank's largest borrower in the UK. And at its peak, we have over €2,000,000,000 of debt outstanding, representing around a third of our net debt at that time. This funding was all raised at favorable rates, leveraging EIB's mandate to fund projects with a beneficial impact on the environment. Post Brexit, EIB funding is no longer available to us.
Our environmental funding journey has therefore evolved amid with the publication of our sustainable finance framework in November 2020, allowing credit investors with an appetite for ESG funding to invest on the basis of our strong credentials in this area. In January 2021, we issued our 1st sustainable bond off framework, a £300,000,000 bond with proceeds allocated for the financing of eligible green or social projects. This first bond issued from our framework attracted significant investor interest Following engagement with around 50 institutional investors over 2 days. The order book was more than 3 times oversubscribed and And attracted a significant number of new investors for credit with over 30% of the bond allocated to overseas investors. It was great to engage with so many investors with such a keen interest in our ESG agenda.
Those who would like to see how the proceeds have been allocated, We published our 1st allocation and impact report recently showing exactly how we're funding projects with a positive ESG impact. In further evidence of a link between ESG performance and investor value, it is significant to note that our debut sustainable bond outperformed the index used for regulatory assumptions and set up new cost of debt by around 150 basis points, securing almost €40,000,000 of financing outperformance over the life of the bond. With €1,200,000,000 of EIB funding still to mature and significant environmental funding requirements going forward, this gives you some context The value that we can drive from our strong ESG credentials in funding our ongoing capital requirements. Next slide please. And now turning to pensions, a topic I will discuss with many of you previously.
But today, I want to focus on the journey, The journey that we've been on for more than 10 years now, a journey to responsibly manage our pension risk. Back in 2010, we had an IFRS pension deficit just under €300,000,000 An off cost in the PR-nine settlement has run a line on the funding of future pension deficits beyond 50% support for the deficit that existed at that point in time. Recognizing this, we established a joint working group with the pension trustees to manage the pension risk collaboratively within acceptable risk and affordability envelopes. We agreed an initiative approach to derisking supported by a variable schedule of debt to repair contributions and a plan that saw us progressively establish hedges to minimize volatility caused by market risk. As a result, we made our final deficit repair contribution in 2019.
And now our pension schemes are fully funded on a low dependency basis, which means no further deficit repay contributions are due. Furthermore, because the pension schemes are fully funded for fully hedged for interest rates and inflation, We would expect pension scheme position to be largely insulated from market volatility. This has been a decade long journey of risk mitigation for us. Today, the U. K.
Government has just brought onto the statute books the Pension Schemes Act 2021, which will be supported by a new funding code from the pensions regulator. In short, these changes will progressively require other companies to follow a similar approach and achieve the responsible position we have already. These changes are likely to have 3 impacts on companies. Companies not fully funded on a low dependency basis will face increased debt to repay contributions. The regulator will be able to retrospectively scrutinize company's decisions, especially around the appropriateness of paying dividends when pension deficits persist, recognizing the potential for criminal liability for directors who are found culpable.
And for many, this will likely result in the increasing prioritization of pension deficit to pay contributions to the potential detriment of future dividends. As we are fully funded on a low dependency basis, we don't have any of these concerns. So classic example of how in doing the right thing for all stakeholders, we have delivered resilience and long term sustainable value. Next slide, please. Now turning to corporate governance more broadly.
Being open, honest and transparent about what we do and how we perform is key to building and maintaining trust and legitimacy with all our stakeholders. Through the systems and processes through which our organization is managed, controlled and held accountable, we maintain the highest ethical standards of business conduct and corporate governance. This slide gives just a snapshot of the recognition we see for our strong performance in this area. We adopt the most up to date standards of best practice And more often than not, adopt early and lead the way for the sector. We were early adopters of the current U.
K. Corporate governance code and Provided a long term viability statement ahead of it being a requirement under the code. As climate change mitigation and adaptation become ever increasing focus, We will be only listed water company to include a full TCFD disclosure in our FY 2020 reporting accounts and have included our disclosure still further in the latest FY 2021 annual reporting accounts. And earlier this year, we were awarded the fair tax mark for the 3rd consecutive year, recognizing our continued commitment to paying our fair share of tax and behaving in an open and transparent manner in relation to our tax affairs. As a public listed company, you would expect us to adhere to the high standards of corporate governance.
But as the slide demonstrates, We are consistently recognized as going above and beyond the minimum. Next slide, please. This slide shows that when we test ourselves through assessment across a broad range of ESG indices, we are consistently one of the leading performers. We have attained world class status with Dow Jones Sustainability Index for 14 consecutive years. And in April this year, we were ranked 9 604 Global Utilities in the Sustainalytics ESG Risk Rating Assessment positioning us as the leading water utility in the sector in the index.
CDP is a global disclosure system for environmental reporting. And in 2020, our CDP climate change rating improved from B to A-, demonstrating leadership level reporting and disclosure. Along with Wettix Water, we are the only 2 companies in the U. K. Water sector to achieve leadership level in this very important area.
In February, we received an MSCI ESG rating of AA, recognizing our ability to manage industry And in 2020, EcoAct assessed us as 11th in the FTSE 100 and the highest ranking listed water company, firmly positioning us as the leader on environmental matters in our sector. From an employee perspective, we achieved a significant improvement in the workforce disclosure initiative, Going well above the overall average and receiving special recognition in the COVID-nineteen transparency category at the recent Workforce Transparency Awards. So as you can see, we actively participate in a broad range of global ESG ratings, indices and frameworks to benchmark our approach against best practice and emerging sustainability challenges. And we find ourselves consistently assessed as a leader in this space. Next slide please.
We recognize that customers and other stakeholders don't differentiate between United Utilities and our suppliers And see us operating together. We believe that it's crucial, therefore, that we not only hold ourselves to the high standards of corporate governance and sustainability more generally, but we also drive these principles for our supply chain. The United Supply Chain approach that are structured around the environment, social and governance issues that are important to us as a business and in our approach to responsible sourcing. These principles have helped us identify areas of risk within our supply chain and develop strategies to eliminate these risks. Suppliers are expected to become signatures to our responsible sourcing principles and we encourage those suppliers to have the capability to become leaders to work with us more closely Our supply chain is critical to our success, and we've demonstrated that we can work collaboratively on key issues.
As Joe mentioned earlier, we're the 1st company in the sector to have science based carbon emission targets approved, including targets that cover our supply chain emissions. We are working together with our suppliers on this critical issue. We do have successfully gained the CIPF corporate ethics kite mark, recognizing that our people are equipped with the knowledge and understanding to ensure that we procure in an ethical manner. And we believe that operating and procuring in a responsible manner will mitigate risk, Build resilience, improve compliance and ultimately deliver better value for customers. Next slide please.
So before we open up to Q and A, I'd like to briefly summarize some of the key points you've heard this morning from Joe, Chris and myself. We have a strong track record of performance on ESG matters. On the environment, we are leading the sector in terms of pollution performance And once again, achieved industry leading 4 star status with the EA. We're making good progress in our journey to carbon net 0 by 2,030 And I'm on track against our 6 carbon pledges, including being the 1st company in the sector to have validated science based carbon targets, including those 3 emission targets. And we've already started planning for PR24.
We're seeing ongoing investment is required to continue to protect and enhance the environment. With good visibility of over $500,000,000 of investment needed in the Ampay in Greater Manchester area alone. On social, we're supporting more customers than ever before, and we're well placed to meet customer needs as we emerge from the effects of COVID. Our workplace is at the heart of our local communities where we understand our impact and tackle those issues that matter most. And we recognize that the And finally, on governance, robust balance sheet and prudent financial mismanagement open long term financial resilience.
We are leveraging on our ESG credentials, raising environmental funding of our sustainable finance framework And our debut sustainable bond secured significant financing outperformance as further evidence of the link between ESG performance and investor value. We were early adopters of best practice corporate governance and we performed well across a broad range of ESG indices. ESG has been very much at the heart of our overall strategy now for a long time and due to the performance you've seen to date, we know that there's always more we can do And ESG will continue to be a fundamental priority in the coming years ahead. By delivering on our funds, we will ensure we continue to improve the benefit of all our stakeholders. Thank you for listening.
And I'll now pass back to Jordan to take questions.
For those joining us via the webcast, you can submit questions via the question tab. We have a question from Mark Froshni of Credit Suisse. Mark, the line is yours.
Hey. No, thank you for taking my question. My question is on Your own ethics versus your contractors, because as I understand it, you have roughly 5,000 employees, but Depending upon the points of the year and what you've got on, you might have at least twice that People working on your network, working on your assets, particularly the capital delivery plan. And I guess Your supply chain, there are a lot of things that happen in the supply chain, and that's a lot of consequences there. So how do you work with your contractors, particularly in the sensitive areas to ensure That they live and breathe the same kind of standards that you've presented to us today.
Okay. Thank you, Mark, and good morning. It's a great question. I think sort of contractors are sort of fundamental Our business, as you say, there's quite a lot of our contractors sort of managing particularly in the network area, for example, Where we've got a heavy reliance on contractors. Those contractors operate very much badged as UU sort of workforce.
So that really, really is double the importance of sort of having a responsible approach. And I've touched on in the sort of Session today versus the United Supply Chain Initiative, which is, I suppose, the umbrella under which a lot of that is actually captured and governed in terms of the responsible principles that we apply there. So it's very much fair to say, but we see that the supply chain is an extension of the United Utilities business. Our customers will see them as part of United Utilities, and we take it incredibly seriously. So I think Those business principles in terms of the United Supply Chain is the sort of key focus for driving the right outcomes and behaviors.
But sort of leave it to that, I think, Mark.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Jordan, if there's no current questions on the phone lines, I'll take a couple from the webcast that come in. So we've got the first question from Neville White at Eden Tree Investment Management. And he says here, we spoke about the initiatives around improving river quality. Can you say something about the state firstly, the state of the river quality in the Yiu Yiu region more generally and what the key challenges are? Secondly, the Mersey area, in particular, because particularly we didn't talk about, we focus obviously a lot on Manchester, So I'll pass it across to Jo to sort of respond to that.
Hi there, Neville. Thanks for your question. So in sort of summary, I can give you a few sort of stats and bits of information to give you sort of sense of the overall quality of the rivers in the northwest. So just 12% of the rivers are classified as poor or bad, 21% are classified as good and the vast majority, 55%, are classified as moderate. And the Environment Agency used that data to determine the investment that's required, not only in the water industry, but across lots of different sectors.
So if you look at something, the Evarent Agency identified something called regions for failure. And so that's really identifying where are the key impacts on water And by far, the largest number of reasons for failure in the Northwest are associated with agriculture. So 44% of the reasons for failure in the Northwest are associated with agriculture. Reasons for failure associated with Our operations as a water business are around 18% of that figure, so much, much lower So in agriculture, not far above the number that are attributed to urbanization and transportation, which is at 13%. And where our reasons for failure are identified associated with water industry, the legislation around the water framework directive to identify those key projects that we need to deliver as part of our investment program.
So we're delivering a range I touched on if you remember the £730,000,000 worth of investment, which will deliver improvements to those reasons of failure by 2027 beyond. With regard to the Mersey more specifically, I've not got the Breakdown of figures in front of me for the reasons for failure. But the quality of the River Mersey is really the sort of the underpin of this conversation that We had earlier around Greater Manchester. The Mersey begins in the Pennines in the Peak District and flows through growth in Greater Manchester before reaching Merseyside. We know that we've got some significant challenges around environmental water quality in Greater Manchester, driven by those Factors that we talked about, so urban transportation as well as the water industry.
And historically, because of the level of Cannalization of those rivers within Greater Manchester targets have been set that are less stringent than elsewhere because of the geophysical nature of those rivers. So we're working very closely with the Environment Agency to identify where investment will be required in AMP8 and AMP 9. And we'll be building that collaborative plan, not just with the Environment Agency, but with other stakeholders and particularly local authorities across the region.
Okay. Thank you, Joe. Very comprehensive. Another question from the webcast from Annie at Ekapind. There's 4 parts of this question.
So I think I'll probably take the 4 parts in turn and answer each as we go. So First question probably to Joe really is how do we completely plan to reduce emissions? How do we decarbonize your assets? And do you have any renewables to satisfy your energy needs? So I'll perhaps ask Joe to respond on that.
Yes. So we've got a robust Program of work that we need to deliver over the next 20, 30 years to actually focus on decarbonization. Obviously, what we're focusing on at the moment is the decarbonization of a lot of our operations. So particularly looking at fuel use And energy use as sort of priorities and looking at our fleet as these are sort of known options that we can deliver very quickly. Our cost of our emissions are associated with our process that we operate from our wastewater and bioresources treatment.
So we're focusing increasingly on understanding how we can change our asset base in order to reduce those emissions. So as an example, we're looking at how we can maximize advanced digestion Our bioresources business to significantly reduce the carbon emissions from our bioresources business. We generate about 25 of our own electricity through our renewables. So that's either from our sludge digestion through bioresources or through other renewable activities, so through So we're really focused on trying to understand how operational changes can drive our process emissions down, Better understanding the science and looking at how innovative and new technology is part of our 8 submission process through PR24 to make significant improvements.
And just to add to that, sort of people may have heard Steve and I talking about at the disposable valve renewables business at the full year results in May. But just to be clear, we in any disposal that goes ahead, we'll be retaining the Full off take of those renewable assets. So effectively, it doesn't impact our carbon ambitions. And indeed, instead of Managing disposal process and recycling the capital, we're able to put that capital back into work in the business in terms of further driving our carbon ambitions. So we will.
Yes. Moving on to the second question. You've mentioned about issues addressing client behavior to save water. Could you please give some more concrete examples? So I'll perhaps ask Chris just to talk a little bit about what we're doing with our customers and water efficiency initiatives.
Yes. Thanks very much, Phil. Thanks, Annie, for your question. You're actually right. It's really important we work with our customers and wider stakeholders to promote the importance of Of water efficiency, Joe referred to earlier our long term goal to reduce the amount of water consumed by each individual from over 140 Leases per person today is 110 Leases per person today.
And we do need some specific measures to get there. So a couple of examples I could share with you. And for customers with a potential leak, we do provide proactive water efficiency advice through a rolling home audit program, Which includes the installation of water saving devices and the identification of any leaks. Year to date, we fixed over 3,000, Which is, say, between 60 85 liters per property per day, not to mention the same as on the customer's Bill. And in parallel to measures like that in the home, of course, we need to continue to communicate And that's what we do to improve behavior change through email, social media and digital channels and targeted engagements such as text Through customers.
And there's been a recent launch of a new platform across the sector. We've been promoting it here as well called Get Water Fit, which I'd encourage you all to download, which enables customers to self audit and order water saving devices. And in the 1st 4 weeks, we saw 20,000 registrations. So a couple of examples of the steps we're taking really to drive Water efficiency across customers in the Northwest.
Okay. Thank you, Chris. The third part of the question was water is a very scarce resource. Can you talk about your weak leakage rate over the last 10 years and how it's improved? I think just picking this up, we've halved our leakage Position since privatization.
We've met our regulatory leakage target now for 15 consecutive years. And last year in FY 2021 was our lowest ever level of leakage. Clearly, we continue to innovate in this area in terms of new techniques. And We've talked before about how we use satellites and sniffer dogs to sort of help sort of identify sort of areas of leakage. And we're continuing to invest in water pipe and water pipe network.
Across this AMP, our target for the leakages to continue to reduce leakages by 15% by The 4th question was then about green funding and regarding the green funding from EIB. Did we satisfy the requirements and use of proceeds in the designated projects? And is there any reporting documentation available? So the EIB, very much the same as the sustainable finance framework. EIB had a sort of a criteria for projects.
They would come out and visit the company and undertake environmental audits and review the use of proceeds in a bilateral way. There is no sort of public documentation available because as I say, they were very much in that bilateral relationship hands on and came on to the site to Undertaker reviews of the work that we've been doing. So that's how they manage the environmental compliance side of things. And third question that we've got from the webcast is from Pavan at JP Morgan. And Pavan is asking, can we talk about the discussions with the regulator on investment and ODIs at NowPay?
And is ESG creating more opportunities to invest and earn rewards? And I guess, it's sort of still very early days for Sort of ampeting PR24, but we are working for our funds now as we sort of work up to PR24. And it's fair to say that I think environmental drivers are fundamental to sort of Ampage and beyond. And you touched on ESG and I think focusing on the E there and the environment, the sort of focus around climate change adaptation And mitigation activities is clearly key. So I'll pass across to perhaps Jo just to sort of touch on A bit more granular detail.
Thanks, Bill. So with regard to sort of our plans for unpaid and looking at the investment opportunities, I suppose we're talking to both of our regulators, so the Environment Agency and Ofwat. So our conversations with the Environment Agency are now well underway to identify where investment The government through DESPRA is currently publishing and consulting on a whole series of pieces of documentation That's going to drive the shape of our investment program moving forward. So the strategic policy statement, the SPS, And then 2 documents called the WinF and the WIDA, which really guide our investment. And embedded in those documentations, that documentation is A clear sort of strategy from government to be able to balance clear environmental improvements with investing for reducing carbon and climate change adaptation.
So that will sort of form the basis of our plans moving forward. In terms of Ofwat, they are obviously party to The development of those plans, and we're talking to them quite considerably about the sort of shape of what OTIs might look like moving forward. I think our sort of initial indication is that they might be simplified, and so there might be fewer number and more common measures across the industry. But certainly, they're very excited and interested in looking at aspects of ESG and particularly around natural capital and carbon. And so we're having ongoing
Thank you, Joe. So those are all the questions that are coming on the webcast. Jordan, is there any Final questions on the telephone line.
We have no further questions on the phone lines.
Okay. Thank you, Jordan. So just to say thank you very much, everyone, for participating in the event today. Hopefully, you found it useful and informative, and look forward to talking to you again in the future. Thank you very much.