The External Relationships Team

The External Relationships Team are here to support customers with Affordability Schemes and the Priority Services Register. 

The team is made up of several coordinators who are responsible for building solid partnerships, and community outreach work supporting customers face to face.

 

Helping our community

The External Relationships Team work to support customers by connecting with individuals at community events. 

We work with many organisations including community groups, job centres, charities, housing associations and local councils. 

This helps us identify and engage with customers who need the most support. 

What we do:

Our community calendar

Find an event at a time and place that suits you. You can meet us at:

Community events

We'll attend events across our region.  

We want to engage with as many customers as we can and support those who need help the most.  

We will be able to offer direct support to our customers and raise awareness of our affordability schemes.  

We will also provide leaflets for customers to take with them.

Talks

We can also deliver talks to organisations and our customers – these can be virtual or face to face and we travel to you.

These sessions are an opportunity for you to have more time to discuss your questions and concerns.  

We'll provide organisations with training packs which they can refer to and a selection of leaflets for our customers.

Drop-in sessions

We can attend drop-in sessions in your area and work with you to provide the best outcome for our customers.  

Over the years we’ve attended various community hubs and centres.  

Get in touch if you would like us to visit and host a drop-in session somewhere in your community. We’d be happy to arrange something with you. 

Assist with completing applications

Some of our customers find it difficult to fill out forms and just need some help, guidance or reassurance while completing applications. 

In exceptional circumstances, we can support customers who need a helping hand with applying for Severn Trent affordability schemes.

 

Set up a referral process

We can set up referral processes, especially with Local Authorities and Housing Providers.

We can then look at ways we can support customers with Affordability Schemes and possibly passporting them onto some of these schemes, particularly Care Leavers and Introductory Tenants.
 

Hear from organisations we've worked with

Read some of our exciting case studies and testimonials.

The relationship coordinator is also our first point of contact should there be a problem with any of our customer STW accounts.  Having this relationship is invaluable as it makes our job so much easier having a first point of contact as any queries are sorted as soon as they are raised. 

We feel that any concerns we have raised with the External Relationships Team are always listened too. The most recent being the changes on the eligibility criteria to the Big Difference Scheme.   The dialogue we had with the Relationship Coordinator has meant that small changes to the eligibility have now been amended. 

We also work together to promote water relief schemes to all our mutual customers. This is done via letter campaigns, emails and other appropriate forms of communication. We find the Partnership working with STW invaluable to the work that we do” 

Vicky Gunn, Employment and Money Advice Officer, Severnside Housing

Severn Trent have been so pro-active in engaging not just with ourselves but with our customers to provide as much support possible. This has helped ease pressures around support teams thanks to Severn Trent’s efforts.

We currently work with nine local authorities across the region to auto-enrol young adults as they make the move to independent living for the first time, taking away the need for our customers to reach out.

"The Severn Trent 'Big Difference scheme has been an invaluable support to our young people. The scheme has supported our care leavers during the cost-of-living crisis and has helped them access their own tenancies. In Coventry, we have an excellent partnership with Sever Trent"

Coventry Through Care team.

Although our service users will generally first visit the Good Shepherd because they are in need of food, they are usually facing many other complex challenges and have no idea how to address dealing with them.

To have Samantha from Severn Trent regularly attending the Good Shepherd to build strong working relationships, and then provide help and advice in relation to bills and payment options, is such an important step and has a really positive impact on people’s day-to-day lives.

Our partners

Our team work very closely with local authorities across the region including Housing Associations and Councils.

We want to ensure we are reaching out to our customers by proactively increasing awareness of our customer assistance schemes along with services your organisation offer. We do this by sharing service needs.

We can promote by letter, email and text and we will share results. Joint mailshots have proven to be a very successful way we can support you in reducing debts for our customers.

There’s a variety of activities we can support you with and what is great is all our services are completely free!

Organisations we’ve worked with

We’ve worked with many organisations, including:

Get in touch with us

Please get in touch using the form below if you would like a member of the team to set up an Affordability Partnership, deliver a training session or attend your event to discuss Severn Trent’s Affordability Schemes.

The asterisk (*) symbol denotes required fields.

Let us know the details of the person who will be the best point of contact for us.

 

Organisation's postal address

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Tell us about the type of event you'd like us to attend or the kind of support you'd like us to provide.

 

If you have a date in mind, please select below.