Emergency Planning & Incident Manager

The Role

When incidents happen, communities rely on us to respond quickly, safely, and effectively. This pivotal role sits at the heart of how United Utilities prepares for, manages, and recovers from emergencies across the water industry.

Leading the incident programme, you ll shape and deliver our emergency planning, incident management, and business continuity strategy - working across the organisation to ensure robust, tested plans and a confident, well trained response.

From developing high quality emergency and incident response plans to ensuring compliance with the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and SEMD, you ll play a key role in protecting customers, colleagues, and critical services when it matters most.

• Lead United Utilities  emergency planning, incident management, business continuity policy, strategy and governance, ensuring alignment with corporate risk and resilience management.
• Act as the company expert on incident response, providing best practice advice, procedural assurance and leadership support during incidents.
• Drive consistent emergency planning and incident response capability across strategic, tactical and operational levels, working closely with ICC RMs and internal stakeholders.
• Develop, sponsor and deliver emergency, crisis and incident response training and exercising in partnership with Learning & Development.
• Lead UU s engagement with external stakeholders and statutory partners, including Defra, LRFs and responders under the Civil Contingencies Act, Water Act and related legislation.
• Represent UU at local, regional and national resilience forums, and lead industry collaboration with Water UK and other water companies.
• Ensure compliance with regulatory and legislative requirements, including Defra audit obligations and Security and Emergency Measures Directions.
• Lead post incident review processes, embedding lessons learned and ensuring delivery of improvement actions across the business.
• Oversee business continuity planning through direction and support of the Business Continuity Advisor, ensuring delivery of strategic objectives.
• Develop and report management information and performance metrics on incident and emergency planning compliance and specify corporate solutions and investment to strengthen capability.

• A full, valid UK driving licence.
• Demonstrable expertise in emergency and incident planning, business continuity planning, and incident response.
• Strong knowledge of the Civil Contingencies Act and the wider UK resilience framework.
• Clear understanding of relevant regulatory obligations and industry standards.
• Ability to successfully undergo UK Government security vetting.
• Flexibility to work non standard hours and deploy at short notice to support incident response across the North West.
• Proven experience managing complex internal and external stakeholder relationships, including regulators.

This role may not be eligible for sponsorship.

• Competitive based salary
• A generous annual leave package of 26 days, which increases to 30 days after four years of service (increases one day per year), in addition to 8 bank holidays
• A competitive pension scheme with up to 14% employer contribution, 21% combined, and life cover
• Up to 10.5% performance-related bonus scheme, as well as recognition awards for outstanding achievements
• A comprehensive healthcare plan through our company-funded scheme
• My Gym Discounts  - gym and wellness benefit that offers up to 25% off on gym memberships and digital fitness subscriptions
• Best Doctors
• Salary Finance
• Wealth at Work courses
• Deals and discounts
• EVolve Car Scheme
• Employee Assistance Plan
• Mental health first aiders
• Share Buy
• MORE Choices flexible benefits
• Enhanced parental leave schemes