On the move: Eon, Scottish Water, SGN

Utility Week's latest round-up of appointments across the utilities sectors includes two new chief executives starting their respective tenures, the departure of South Staffordshire’s group chief executive and a newly-created role at SGN.

South Staffordshire

After more than two decades at South Staffordshire, Phil Newland has announced that he will leave the company.

Newland has acted as group chief executive since 2020, having previously acted as managing director of South Staffs Water.

Announcing his departure on LinkedIn, Newland has yet to reveal what his next role will be.

He said: “After a hugely enjoyable and varied 21 years at South Staffordshire Plc I have decided to step down and spend some time relaxing before my next role.

“I’ve worked with many wonderful colleagues and clients and I wish you all every success for the future.”

Eon

Eon UK’s new chief executive Chris Norbury began his tenure this week, replacing Michael Lewis who left the company after three decades.

Norbury, who was only announced as the new chief executive last week, previously acted as Eon UK’s chief people officer.

He joined the company in 2014 after more than 20 years in HR and transformation roles for major international organisations including Eon SE, EDF and Unilever. He became chief people officer in 2018.

Commenting on his appointment, he said: “I am delighted to be appointed to lead Eon UK and what I already know to be an excellent team. It’s a fantastic time to take on this challenge and a real privilege to follow Michael.

“Energy is central to people’s lives and that brings an incredible responsibility. There are real challenges as we all know – in the short term making energy more affordable and, longer term, the urgent need to decarbonise our economy.

“We can only tackle these challenges together: supporting our customers, making best use of digital technologies to drive the energy transition so people can better afford energy, understand it and benefit from it.”

Scottish Water

Alex Plant has begun his reign as Scottish Water chief executive officer following the retirement of Douglas Millican.

Plant was previously director of strategy and regulation at Anglian Water.

Plant said: “A key challenge will be taking forward the transformation work which is already underway. This will ensure that Scotland’s water and wastewater services continue to provide value for money and provide confidence for customers as we face some real challenges, especially around climate change.”

The company’s board made the appointment that was then approved by Scottish government. Chair Dame Susan Rice said Plant’s career in public, private, and not-for-profit sectors had a “thread of public service and of genuine commitment to communities, customers and staff”.

SGN

SGN has created a new senior role of director of capability to enhance their apprenticeship and training offerings.

Taking up the role is Susie McKirdy who joins SGN having previously worked as head of learning and development for Hitachi Rail.

McKirdy said: “I’m excited to be joining SGN to help tackle the long-term skills shortages we’ve experienced across the engineering, energy and utilities sectors. We’re taking a proactive approach, recruiting and investing in diverse talent, and upskilling our people to ensure we have a resilient, high performing workforce for the future.”

The creation of the new role, comes as SGN announced plans to hire hundreds of frontline engineering staff over the coming year.

SGN chief executive Mark Wild said: “This is our biggest ever recruitment drive and I’m delighted that this year we’ll be offering close to 200 apprenticeships and training opportunities to people from all backgrounds to really turbo-charge our talent pipeline for the future.”

Climate Change Committee

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has raided the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) to bolster its analytical team.

Current NIC chief economist James Richardson has been appointed to lead the CCC’s analytical team in the role of director of analysis and chief economist.

Richardson will begin his new role in August, having spent seven years with the NIC which has included heading up the Commission’s programme of work on net zero infrastructure.

CCC chief executive Chris Stark said: “I’m delighted to welcome James Richardson to the CCC. James is one of the UK’s leading economists. He brings us expertise in some of the critical areas for our next phase of work: infrastructure.”

Arqiva

Leading global communications infrastructure and media services company Arqiva has announced the appointment of Dom Wedgewood as chief technology officer.

Before joining Arqiva, Wedgewood acted as senior vice president at DAZN Group, the live and on-demand global sports streaming platform.

Wedgewood said: said: “It is a great time to be joining Arqiva. This business has a great track record of delivering innovation for its customers, and industry at large, and I’m looking forward to continuing that work.

“This role has a broad and exciting scope. Building on Arqiva’s reputation for delivering world-class services, my team and I will be focused on developing solutions that accelerate innovation and growth for our customers through the use of new and emerging technologies.”