Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water has unveiled a sweeping transformation plan that will see up to 500 jobs cut over the next two years—a move the not-for-profit utility says is crucial to safeguarding essential services and delivering better value for customers. The announcement, made on September 11, 2025, comes at a time of mounting pressure on the water sector, with rising bills, environmental scrutiny, and financial headwinds all converging on one of Wales’ most prominent public service providers.
The company, which serves over three million people across Wales and adjoining areas, currently employs about 4,000 staff. The planned reduction represents a 12% cut to its workforce, with the majority of losses expected to come from back office and managerial roles. According to Welsh Water, the intention is to protect and enhance frontline services, with every possible pound redirected into improving water and wastewater operations, environmental improvements, and critical network investment.
“Customers rightly expect us to invest in improving our services and to keep our own costs to a minimum – and that’s exactly what this programme will achieve,” outgoing chief executive Pete Perry stated, as reported by Nation.Cymru. “With customers’ bills increasing, we have challenged ourselves hard to reduce our own costs to ensure every pound we spend brings benefit to customers and maintains our financial resilience during a challenging period for the sector.”
The transformation programme, which is set to unfold over 18 to 24 months, is designed to reshape the organisation by increasing the use of technology and data, redesigning processes, and reviewing the company’s entire cost base. Welsh Water says these changes are essential to maximize efficiency and keep the business on a financially stable and sustainable footing for the long term.
Formal consultations with employee representatives and trade unions began on the same day as the announcement. The company has emphasized its commitment to handling the process with “care, compassion, and fairness,” prioritizing voluntary exits, retraining, and redeployment wherever possible. Affected employees will have access to financial guidance, wellbeing services, career transition support, and reskilling pathways, the company confirmed.
Notably, the restructuring will not impact Welsh Water’s investment programme, which promises more than £4 billion in spending over the next five years, with over half earmarked for environmental performance improvements. “We are acting now so we can protect services for customers, investing more in our networks and the environment, and ensure that as much of our customers’ money as possible goes into the things that matter most: reliable water and wastewater services and support when people need us,” Perry reiterated, according to BBC News.
The timing of the announcement coincides with a period of significant turbulence in the water sector. In April 2025, water bills for most households in Wales rose by an average of 27%, from £503 to £639 per year, with further increases expected until 2030. The industry as a whole has also faced downgrades by credit rating agencies Fitch and Moody’s earlier this year, reflecting heightened investment needs and regulatory challenges. Despite these downgrades, Welsh Water says its financing costs have not increased, as reported by WalesOnline.
Welsh Water’s leadership is also in transition. Pete Perry will step down in the spring, to be succeeded by Roch Cheroux, the former head of Sydney Water in Australia. Cheroux’s appointment has not been without controversy—media reports suggested he was sacked from his previous post, but Welsh Water has pushed back against these claims. The company stated, “Roch’s departure from Sydney Water followed a change of government in New South Wales when board-level changes were made to most public bodies... As recognised by the New South Wales Government, Roch was ‘instrumental in modernising the organisation and preparing it for the long-term challenges of water security, infrastructure delivery and customer service in a rapidly growing city.’”
The company’s recent track record on environmental performance has drawn criticism from both regulators and campaigners. In May 2025, Welsh Water was fined £1.35 million and ordered to pay over £70,000 in costs after pleading guilty to more than 800 breaches of environmental permits related to sewage discharges during 2020 and 2021. According to Natural Resources Wales (NRW), the failings were “avoidable should better contingency planning have been in place,” and the cumulative impact of the breaches was considered significant.
Siân Williams, head of operations at NRW, told Nation.Cymru, “This case highlights inadequacies in the processes at Dŵr Cymru which led to widespread permit breaches across Wales and over the border during a period of two years. While we appreciate the disruption all businesses faced during 2020 with the Covid-19 pandemic, we believe the failings shown by Dŵr Cymru were avoidable should better contingency planning have been in place.”
NRW downgraded Dŵr Cymru’s environmental performance from a four-star (industry leading) company in 2020 to two-star (requires improvement) in 2022 and 2023. The company also recorded its highest number of sewage pollution incidents in a decade in 2024, with sewage released into rivers, lakes, and the sea for a total of 968,000 hours, according to BBC News. In October 2024, the industry regulator Ofwat imposed a £24.1 million underperformance penalty on Welsh Water. Ofwat itself is set to be scrapped, with Wales expected to get its own water watchdog.
Critics have pointed to leadership failures at Welsh Water, particularly in light of high executive pay, persistent problems with leaking pipes, wasted water, and soaring bills. Jane Dodds, leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, voiced her concerns to WalesOnline: “Workers are now paying the price for systematic leadership failures over many years at Dwr Cymru. While Welsh Water’s chief executive received remuneration of £892,000 in 2021 alone, the leadership team at Dwr Cymru presided over some of the highest levels of sewage dumping in the entire UK, extremely high levels of leaking pipes and wasted water and soaring bills for Welsh customers. I’m extremely concerned about what these job cuts will mean for tackling all of these issues.”
Despite the criticism, Welsh Water has stressed that it is a not-for-profit company with no shareholders, and every penny is reinvested for the benefit of customers, communities, and the environment. The company insists the transformation programme is necessary to ensure long-term resilience and the ability to invest in the services and improvements that matter most to the people of Wales.
As Welsh Water embarks on this period of significant change, the stakes for both its workforce and the communities it serves could hardly be higher. The coming months will reveal whether the ambitious transformation delivers on its promises of better value, improved environmental stewardship, and restored public trust.
