Location
Hybrid / Reading / Swindon

Hours
Full-time - 36 hours per week

Salary
£65,000 to £70,000 per annum, dependent on experience

About the Role
This is an exciting opportunity to lead a high-profile, organisation-wide programme that will place customers at the heart of significant business decisions. Over the 18-month fixed-term contract, 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 collaborate across Retail, Finance, Strategy and External Affairs, Operations, Customer Insight, Legal, Regulation, and other business areas, gaining broad organisational exposure and building strong relationships with senior leaders, decision owners, change teams, and governance forums.

As Consumer Involvement Lead, you will take ownership of a defined programme of activities designed to meet the expectations of the Consumer Involvement Rule. 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 to enable timely customer insight and independent challenge
- Creating and maintaining a central evidence repository linking customer insight, 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 is needed
- Leading multiple workstreams, managing dependencies, risks, and actions to ensure focus and delivery of 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 across the business
- Developing proportionate monitoring and assurance arrangements, identifying gaps, and supporting improvements
- Producing clear reporting for senior leadership and governance forums on progress, evidence quality, risks, and emerging issues
- Consolidating evidence and coordinating accurate, timely responses and external reporting outputs
- Monitoring external guidance and sector developments to continuously improve the operating model
- Delivering a fully documented and sustainable handover into business-as-usual ownership by the end of the contract

Experience
- Demonstrable experience leading complex, cross-functional programmes or organisational change within a regulated or similarly complex environment
- Experience translating regulatory, legislative, policy, or strategic requirements into practical processes, controls, and sustainable ways of working
- Strong programme management skills, including coordinating multiple workstreams, dependencies, risks, actions, and stakeholders
- Proven success embedding change across different business areas, overcoming barriers and gaining buy-in
- Knowledge of how customer evidence, insight, and engagement inform organisational decision-making
- Experience establishing practical governance, reporting, monitoring, or assurance arrangements across multiple business areas
- Ability to critically assess the quality, relevance, and sufficiency of evidence
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, able to turn complex information into clear, engaging messages for diverse audiences
- Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills with a collaborative, hands-on approach
- Confidence and credibility to work with senior leaders, decision owners, change teams, and governance forums
- Ability to build trusted relationships and create sustainable change through others
- Customer-focused mindset balancing regulatory expectations with practical business delivery

About You
You will be a confident and credible leader with a collaborative approach, able to work across organisational boundaries and lead complex programmes. You have excellent communication and stakeholder management skills and a strong customer focus. You are adaptable and able to translate regulatory requirements into practical, sustainable business improvements. Experience in the water sector or regulated industries is beneficial but not essential.

Qualifications
No specific qualifications are required; however, relevant experience in programme leadership, organisational change, or regulatory delivery is essential.

Additional Valuable Experience
It would be beneficial, but not essential, if you have experience in one or more of the following areas:
- Thames Water or wider water-sector experience
- Utilities or other regulated industries
- Business-to-consumer organisations where customer needs and voice are central
- Programme or change roles delivering regulatory or policy-led change
- Working with regulators, consumer bodies, or independent challenge groups
- Customer strategy, consumer insight, consumer engagement, public policy, or regulatory affairs
- Assurance, audit, compliance, or risk management
- Introducing new organisational processes or ways of working across multiple business areas
- Familiarity with the Consumer Involvement Rule and expectations of Ofwat, the Consumer Council for Water, or independent customer challenge groups