Channel 4’s recent documentary Dirty Business has landed with a thud – and for many viewers, a surge of anger. It dramatises a decade‑long struggle to uncover the truth behind sewage pollution and presents a picture that will feel familiar to anyone working in the water sector: conflicting datasets, technical explanations, references to regulators – and ordinary people left feeling dismissed, confused and powerless.

In the wake of programmes like this, the reflex response is predictable. Calls grow louder for water companies to “be more transparent”. Publish more information. Open up the data. Put everything online.

But the uncomfortable reality is that water companies are already publishing vast amounts of data. And yet public trust continues to erode.

What customers have been telling us – and what the tracking shows

At RED C, our work across the water sector consistently tells the same story. Whether through longitudinal qualitative studies, robust quantitative trust tracking or reputation research, public confidence in water companies has been declining. And customers are remarkably clear and consistent in what they ask for:

• “Be more transparent.”
• “Be more accountable.”
• “Show us clear evidence of the progress you have made.”

These are not knee‑jerk reactions to a single documentary. Dirty Business has simply amplified a set of expectations customers have been expressing for several years.

What’s striking is not what customers are asking for – it’s how the sector often responds.

Transparency without meaning isn’t clarity

In practice, transparency is frequently interpreted – by regulators in particular – as publication. Large amounts of it.

Across the sector, customers can already access:

• Event Duration Monitoring (EDM) spill counts by site and asset
• Annual pollution incident totals split by category
• Leakage volumes measured across thousands of kilometres of pipe
• Performance commitment charts projecting long‑term trajectories
• Dense PDFs setting out year‑on‑year operational metrics, often with little narrative

From an internal, regulatory or engineering perspective, this meets the brief. It reflects enormous effort by teams working under intense scrutiny, under pressure to report accurately, consistently and compliantly.

Yet from a customer perspective, it often doesn’t land.

A table showing storm overflow spills “down 18% year on year” doesn’t reassure people still seeing discoloured rivers locally. A chart showing leakage as “stable” doesn’t comfort households being asked to reduce water use. A line graph that improves only after several years of visible decline rarely rebuilds belief.

For many customers, data without explanation feels less like honesty, and more like deflection.

An engineering mindset in a human moment

The water sector is, by necessity and heritage, engineering‑led. That operational focus has delivered extraordinary infrastructure – largely unseen, underground, and taken for granted until something goes wrong.

It has also attracted people who care deeply about public service: engineers, scientists, operators and environmental specialists who take genuine pride in their work, often in difficult conditions and with ageing infrastructure.

But communication shaped by an engineering mindset can unintentionally prioritise technical completeness over human comprehension.

When customers say “we want transparency”, an engineering‑led sector quite understandably hears: “show us everything.” Hence the instinctive response – dashboards, methodology notes, raw datasets, comparators.

Marketing and communications teams have increasingly been asked to bridge this gap – translating technical reality into human terms, while operating within regulatory constraints and heightened political and media scrutiny. That is not a simple job.

Yet customers aren’t asking to become engineers. They are asking for help making sense of what’s happening – and for confidence that things are genuinely improving in ways that matter to them.

The people behind the pipes

One risk in the current public narrative is that water companies are portrayed as faceless and uncaring entities, when the reality is far more human.

Across our work, we regularly meet people inside water companies and associated agencies who are frustrated by the same headlines as customers – people who joined the sector to protect the environment, ensure public health, and leave things better than they found them. Many feel a strong sense of custodianship over rivers, coastlines and catchments, and a personal responsibility when things fall short.

In recent years, we have also seen a deliberate shift to put more of those people – including CEOs and senior leaders – directly in front of the public, supported by communications teams working to increase visibility, openness and accountability.

This matters because trust is not rebuilt only through systems and metrics, but through belief in intent. If customers never see the commitment, care and accountability that exists within organisations, the gap between lived effort and public perception widens – even when genuine progress is being made.

Recognising this doesn’t negate failures. But it does shift the starting point from accusation to understanding, and from defensiveness to dialogue.

What happens after transparency

The moment too often overlooked is what customers do once information is published.

Across our qualitative and tracking work, we see three consistent reactions:

• Simplification – complex data collapses into a single emotional takeaway –
  “They’re still not fixing it.”
• Comparison – often shaped by media narratives or partial understanding –
  “Why does it feel better elsewhere?”
• Judgement of intent – not just what the numbers say, but what they imply –
  “They’re protecting themselves, not us.”

Without interpretation, customers fill the gaps themselves. And where trust is already low, those self‑created narratives are rarely forgiving – no matter how carefully the information has been prepared or communicated.

Why Dirty Business cut through

One reason Dirty Business resonated so powerfully is that it didn’t simply present information – it created meaning. It centred people and consequences, not just figures. It showed how data can be technically available yet practically impenetrable, and how transparency without empathy can feel like avoidance rather than openness.

The programme didn’t succeed because it revealed new statistics. It succeeded because it made the emotional truth behind those statistics legible.

That distinction is critical.

From transparency to progress

If transparency is now the baseline expectation, rebuilding trust depends on what comes next. Customers consistently tell us they look for three things beyond data:

Meaning

Not just what happened, but why – what has changed as a result, what’s different now, and what that means for the future, explained clearly and without defensiveness.

Accountability

Clarity on ownership. Who is responsible? What happens if commitments aren’t met? How will customers know?

Progress

Visible, tangible movement – especially at a local level. Customers respond far more strongly to “what has changed where I live” than to national averages or abstract targets.

Progress doesn’t need to be flawless. But it does need to feel real.

Reasons for cautious optimism

There is, however, a note of optimism emerging.

Recent regulatory moves – including Ofwat’s Consumer Involvement Rule, now coming into operation – signal a meaningful shift in direction. The rule sets stronger expectations on water companies not just to consult customers, but to involve them earlier, more consistently and more credibly in shaping decisions.

Handled well, this could be transformational, and insight agencies have a central role to play in helping deliver it successfully.

Crucially, it also changes the role of transparency. Information becomes something explored with customers – tested, stress‑tested and translated into meaning before it reaches the public domain. That is where trust has a chance to rebuild.

Getting the communications right is equally vital. At RED C, we are working closely with water companies to ensure communications directly address what customers are seeking, drawing on our communications development approaches.

In recent months this has been particularly important around bill increases – explaining the shared role customers, companies and regulators play in shaping the future. No water company has nailed this yet, but week by week we are learning what does and doesn’t resonate. As ever in this sector, there is no cookie‑cutter answer, because the challenges are profound.

The opportunity – and the risk

The risk is that heightened scrutiny following Dirty Business leads to more of the same: more dashboards, more portals, more documents – technically correct, but emotionally hollow.

The opportunity lies elsewhere. It is in moving from publication to explanation, from engineering completeness to human sense‑making, and from assuming transparency earns trust to recognising that trust is built through understanding, involvement and credible progress.

Customers are not asking for less honesty.
They are asking for more meaning.

Find out more

Our Utilities team have decades of sector experience and are currently working closely with some of the largest water companies in England and Wales on both regulatory and BAU workstreams.

Get in touch with our team today to find out more about how they can help with your business needs.

UK: Jo Mason – Insight Director | [email protected]
Oliver Farr – Insight Director | [email protected]

IE: [email protected]