Consumer Involvement Lead - FTC

Consumer Involvement Lead - 18-month fixed-term contract

Job title Consumer Involvement Lead - 18 month FTC  Division Retail Location Hybrid - Clearwater Court - RG1 8DB
Contract type Fixed term/Secondment Full/Part-time Full-time Hours 36 Salary A competitive salary of £65,000 to £70,000 per annum, dependent on experience. Job grade B Closing date 06/10/2026

This is an exciting opportunity to lead a high-profile, organisation-wide programme that will help place customers at the heart of significant business decisions.

Over the 18-month opportunity, you will lead the delivery of Thames Water’s approach to the Consumer Involvement Rule, turning an agreed regulatory direction into enhanced practical and sustainable ways of working across the organisation.

You will work across Retail, Finance, Strategy and External Affairs, Operations, Customer Insight, Legal, Regulation and other business areas. This will give you broad organisational exposure and the opportunity to build strong relationships with senior leaders, decision owners, change teams and governance forums.

Whether you are applying from within Thames Water or bringing relevant experience from another organisation, this is an excellent opportunity to broaden your experience, lead change at an organisational level and help embed an approach that will have a lasting impact on our customers and organisation. You will be supported by senior colleagues while owning the programme and bringing its different activities together.

As Consumer Involvement Lead, you will take ownership of a defined programme of activities designed to meet the expectations of the Consumer Involvement Rule.

The organisation has set a clear strategic direction. Your role will be to mobilise the programme, coordinate delivery across the organisation and embed the required activities into sustainable business-as-usual ways of working, while providing guidance to support interpretation of requirements

Your key responsibilities will include:

• Leading the delivery of a complex, cross-functional programme across multiple areas of Thames Water.
• Translating regulatory expectations into clear, proportionate and business-friendly standards, guidance, templates and controls.
• Evolving and embedding a consistent framework for identifying decisions that could have a material impact on customers.
• Establishing a forward view of significant customer-related decisions, allowing customer insight and independent challenge to be planned at the right time.
• Creating and maintaining a central evidence repository that provides a clear and auditable link between customer insight, available options, challenge, decisions and outcomes.
• Working collaboratively with business decision owners, Customer Insight, Legal, Regulation, Internal Audit, governance, assurance and change colleagues.
• Supporting teams to use existing customer insight effectively and identify where additional, proportionate customer engagement may be required.
• Leading multiple work streams, dependencies, risks and actions, ensuring the programme remains focused and delivers the required outcomes.
• Identifying organisational barriers to change and working with stakeholders to build understanding, commitment and ownership.
• Designing and delivering practical training, briefings, case studies and worked examples for teams across the business.
• Developing proportionate monitoring and assurance arrangements in collaboration, identifying gaps and supporting teams to complete agreed improvements.
• Producing clear reporting for senior leadership and governance forums, providing visibility of progress, evidence quality, risks and emerging issues.
• Consolidating evidence and coordinating accurate, timely responses and external reporting outputs
• Monitoring external guidance and sector developments, using learning to continuously improve the operating model.
• Delivering a fully documented and sustainable handover into business-as-usual ownership by the end of the opportunity.

Full-time
-36 hours per week

We recognise that applicants may bring different combinations of experience. You do not need to have worked specifically with the Consumer Involvement Rule, but you will need to demonstrate that you can lead a complex programme, work across organisational boundaries and turn requirements into practical and sustainable change.

The essential skills and experience required are:

• Demonstrable…