Leading Through a Storm: How Nicola Shaw Is Repositioning Yorkshire Water
Exec Exchange – Episode highlight with Nicola Shaw, Chief Executive, Yorkshire Water
Quando Nicola Shaw took over as Chief Executive of Yorkshire Water two and a half years ago, she walked straight into one of the toughest environments any UK utility leader has faced.
The water sector was being publicly hammered over river pollution, combined sewer overflows, ageing infrastructure, customer mistrust and questions over the legitimacy of the privatised model. Headlines were unforgiving. Politicians were circling. Staff morale, across the sector, was understandably fragile.
Nicola took the job with eyes wide open.
“I knew the water sector was a mess… but if things are broken, let’s go and try to help fix it rather than stand back and just throw more mud at it.”
On this episode of The Exec Exchange, she talks to Dr. Piers Clark about leading in a demonised sector, rebuilding internal confidence, and why Yorkshire Water is now gearing up for one of the most significant investment programmes in its history.
From High-Speed Rail and National Grid to Water
Nicola’s background is not “traditional water”. It’s critical national infrastructure:
- High Speed 1 (HS1) – She ran the UK’s only high-speed railway line (London to the Channel Tunnel) from 2011–2016.
- National Grid – She then led the electricity and gas transmission businesses for the UK, and helped:
- Separate and sell the gas distribution business (now Cadent)
- Establish an independent system operator
- Earlier, she ran the UK’s largest bus business and worked internationally in transport and regulation.
Two themes run through that career:
- Cities and people – She began in transport because she cared about how cities function and how infrastructure shapes economic and social outcomes.
- Net zero and transition – Her move to National Grid was driven by the desire to work on decarbonisation and energy transition at system scale.
Those experiences now inform her leadership at Yorkshire Water: she understands networks, engineering cultures, complex regulation and the politics of long-lived assets.
“All of my training in transport was about the importance of links and nodes. Understanding how a network works is important. Understanding how engineers think is important.”
Who and What is Yorkshire Water?
Yorkshire Water is the water and wastewater company for England’s largest county:
- Serves major cities: Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull
- Covers large rural and agricultural areas and national parks in North Yorkshire
- Responsible for drinking water supply and sewage services across a mix of dense urban and environmentally sensitive landscapes
It’s a business with about 4,500 employees, operating in the full glare of public and political scrutiny.
Walking Into a Sector Under Fire
When Nicola joined, the UK water industry was – in her words – “broken” in the public eye:
- Media and campaigners were focused on river pollution e storm overflow discharges
- Political rhetoric was escalating
- Engagement scores at Yorkshire Water had been falling since around 2020, after a pandemic-era high
She also noticed two striking things:
- The sector was more female-led at CEO level than any other UK infrastructure sector.
- There was a risk that those women would be vilified for structural problems they didn’t create.
She took the job anyway, deliberately:
- To help fix rather than comment from the sidelines
- To prove that women leading in crisis can succeed visibly
- And because she believes strongly that purposeful network businesses matter to economies and communities
Has it been as hard as she expected?
“Yes – and a bit worse. But no, I’ve never thought I didn’t want to do it.”
Resetting the Strategy: “Do the Right Thing”
One of Nicola’s first major moves was to simplify and sharpen Yorkshire Water’s strategy around a core purpose that staff could actually believe in:
“We set out that we want to do the right thing by the environment and the right thing by our customers in order to achieve a thriving Yorkshire over the next 10 years.”
That sounds simple. It’s meant to.
Because when she spoke to people inside the business, that’s what they thought they were there to do:
- Serve customers well
- Avoid harming the environment
The problem was the reality: pollution incidents, particularly river water quality and combined sewer overflows, clearly showed that “not harming the environment” was not yet true.
The strategic reset did two important things:
- Externally: it signalled that Yorkshire Water accepted the problem and had a plan to change it, rather than hiding behind technicalities.
- Internally: it gave 4,500 people a clear, emotionally resonant reason to come to work that went beyond regulatory targets.
The impact on staff engagement has been marked:
- Engagement scores had been falling from 2020 onwards
- Since the new strategy launched, they have been rising again
Nicola is clear: without engaged staff, nothing else is possible.
“If we hadn’t been getting that, there was no way we were going to start improving our relationships with our customers, regulators, politicians, or anybody.”
PR24 and an £8 Billion Investment Push
Like all English and Welsh water companies, Yorkshire Water operates in five-year regulatory cycles. The next period, 2025–2030 (PR24), is set to be transformational in scale.
Over the last five years, Yorkshire Water has invested around £5 billion.
Between 2025 and 2030, that rises to around £8 billion.
Key priorities in that investment plan include:
1. River Health and Storm Overflows
Yorkshire Water operates approximately 2,100 combined sewer overflows (CSOs) across the region.
The plan focuses on:
- Reducing the frequency and duration of CSO discharges into rivers
- Removing phosphorus and other pollutants from effluent to improve ecological status
This is at the heart of restoring public trust and meeting tightening regulatory and environmental expectations.
2. Asset Health and Long-Term Resilience
The second major pillar is asset health:
- A large mains replacement programme to tackle leakage, bursts and service risk
- A commitment to revisit and reassess asset health during the period – not just set-and-forget for five years
- Recognition that much of the sector’s infrastructure is ageing and that serious renewal will be a 30-year journey, not a one-period fix
Nicola draws a contrast with the gas sector, where she has deep experience:
- In gas, the consequence of failure is catastrophic – explosions, loss of life – so the risk appetite and replacement assumptions are very conservative.
- In water, failure is different in nature and magnitude – serious and unacceptable, but usually not instantly catastrophic. That difference has led to under-investment and unrealistic assumptions (like effective pipe lives approaching 1,000 years).
Part of the PR24 step change is to challenge those assumptions and build a more realistic, risk-based view of infrastructure renewal.
Leading When You’re Not the Technical Expert
Nicola is candid that she moved into both National Grid and Yorkshire Water without being the deepest technical expert in the room – deliberately.
She wanted to learn:
- How to lead and influence in domains where you cannot personally out-detail the specialists
- How to set direction, culture and expectations so that technical teams can deliver
Her conclusion is blunt and useful for any B2B leader in infrastructure:
“In the end, everything is delivered by people. It doesn’t really matter whether you’ve got a good strategic vision or not. If they don’t want to do it, it’s not going to help.”
Her approach in Yorkshire Water reflects that:
- Clarify purpose (“do the right thing by environment and customers”)
- Communicate it relentlessly
- Align incentives and plans
- And rebuild confidence and pride in a workforce that had been under siege
“You Can Do More Than You Think”: Advice to Her Younger Self
Asked what advice she’d give to the 30-year-old Nicola – already a decade into her career, MIT-trained, with international consulting experience – she doesn’t talk about jobs or sectors. She talks about confidence.
“I would say: encourage me to keep pushing. There were moments when I thought I can’t. And actually, you can always do a bit more than you think you can.”
For emerging leaders in utilities and infrastructure, it’s a useful reminder:
- The work is hard, politicised and often thankless.
- You will frequently doubt yourself.
- But with the right support and mindset, you can push further – and do more – than feels comfortable at the time.
Why This Episode Matters for Utility Leaders
This conversation with Nicola Shaw is particularly relevant if you:
- Lead (or aspire to lead) a regulated infrastructure business under reputational pressure
- Are grappling with river health, CSOs and environmental performance
- Are trying to align staff engagement, regulatory expectations and long-term investment
- Want to understand how leaders from other infrastructure sectors (rail, energy) think about networks, risk and transformation
Yorkshire Water’s story under Nicola’s leadership is far from finished. But the direction is clear:
more investment, more honesty, more purpose – and a deliberate effort to repair both rivers and trust.
To hear the full discussion – including more on strategy, regulation and leadership in a hostile media climate – listen to this episode of The Exec Exchange with Nicola Shaw.