Managing stakeholder engagement in utilities means maintaining an auditable record of every interaction across thousands of contacts, multiple programmes, and constant regulatory scrutiny. In 2026, the organisations doing it well have one thing in common; a single platform that holds the full engagement history, survives staff turnover, and produces regulator-ready evidence in minutes, not days.
What makes stakeholder management different in utilities?
Utilities operate under a level of external scrutiny that most sectors don't. Ofgem, Ofwat, the Environment Agency, the Planning Inspectorate, MPs, local authorities, community groups, and landowners all have a stake in what a water company or a DNO does. And they all have the right to ask what you've done to engage them.
A water company running a capital programme might simultaneously be managing engagement for a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP), a statutory consultation under Ofwat's PR24 framework, daily community relations across multiple operational sites, and political engagement with 50 or more MPs and councillors. Each of those streams has its own stakeholders, its own timeline, and its own reporting requirements.
The challenge isn't the engagement itself. It's the evidence.
What regulators actually expect from your engagement record
The Gunning Principles, first set out in a 1985 judicial review, remain the legal test for public consultations in the UK. They require consultation to happen when it can still influence the outcome, that consultees have sufficient information to respond, that their responses are conscientiously considered, and that the decision-maker keeps the results in mind when deciding.
None of that can be demonstrated without a record. Not a filing cabinet of printouts. A dated, auditable, searchable record of who you engaged, when, how, and what they said.
Ofgem's RIIO price controls, Ofwat's PR submissions, and the Planning Inspectorate's Development Consent Order (DCO) examinations all require this. In a DCO examination, Examining Authorities actively look for gaps in a promoter's Statement of Community Consultation. A missed stakeholder group, an undocumented response, an unacknowledged objection: each is a risk.
The organisations that handle scrutiny well are those that built the record as they went, not those that tried to reconstruct it afterwards.
Why thousands of stakeholders can't live in a spreadsheet
Spreadsheets introduce significant risk into stakeholder management, such as data errors, duplication, version control issues, and limited auditability, which are all common in complex programmes.
Anglian Water manages engagement with more than 13,000 stakeholders across day-to-day operations, the Lincolnshire and Fens Reservoirs programme, and the Cambridge Wastewater Treatment Plant Relocation (CWWTPR), a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project. The scale alone rules out a spreadsheet. The regulatory stakes rule it out twice.
'Tractivity runs our live interactive, day-to-day stakeholder programme, which is invaluable to us. It saves time and provides fantastic insight and reporting outputs that we can present to our Executive Committee on performance and engagement.' — Grant Tuffs, Regional Engagement Manager, Anglian Water
With a central platform, Anglian Water's public affairs team tracks all stakeholder interactions, runs Mapolitical-integrated political engagement (keeping MP and councillor data current), and produces regulatory evidence in minutes rather than days.
How utilities manage live incidents with stakeholder data
The real test of a stakeholder management system isn't the quarterly report. It's 9pm on a Thursday when a burst main affects 2,000 customers, the MP's office is calling, and the press office needs a statement of how many people you've informed.
A platform built for stakeholder engagement holds all of that in one place. Which stakeholders are flagged as priority contacts for this area? Which issues have already been logged against this site? Who last spoke to the local authority, and when? Answering those questions from a spreadsheet, at speed, under pressure, is the situation most utility teams dread.
'The system's efficiency is crucial for both routine and crisis communication, helping us meet the increasing scrutiny from regulators and the public while ensuring that no important stakeholder is overlooked.' — Emily Linsdell, Regional Engagement Advisor, Anglian Water
What defensible engagement looks like at NSIP scale
EDF Energy has run Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C on Tractivity since 2014. The numbers from those programmes set the benchmark for what defensible engagement at NSIP scale looks like:
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~30,000 issues and comments logged and tagged
- 130,000+ stakeholder engagements made
- 70,000+ contacts in the stakeholder database
- 650+ events held or attended
- 100% response rate on stakeholder issues
That last number is the one regulators care about. Every issue logged. Every issue addressed. Evidence is ready to export at the end of each examination phase.
At the end of each phase of the project we send reports as proof we have adhered to the regulations. Having Tractivity allows us to not only gather this in minutes instead of days but also gives us such a comprehensive overview of the project that we can even pinpoint in advance the need for any additional reports or data we might need to support our process during the audit. — Immy Sibly, Communications Relations Executive, Hinkley Point C
What should utility stakeholder management software do?
For a utility company evaluating platforms, the functional checklist looks roughly like this.
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Centralised stakeholder record
Every stakeholder, every interaction, every commitment logged in one place across all programmes. No duplicate records when the same MP appears on three different projects. -
Regulatory reporting
150+ pre-built reports for board, regulator, and FOI responses. Exportable, filterable, and audit-ready by default. -
Communication suite
Mailshots, surveys, event management, and SMS within the same platform, so the engagement record and the communications record are never in different systems. -
Political engagement
Integration with current political data, not last year's. MPs, ministers, and councillors are reshuffled. Your stakeholder data should know who's in post. -
GDPR compliance
Opt-ins, unsubscribes, and data handling are tracked automatically. Required for the PR submission, mandatory for statutory compliance, and simply the right thing to do. -
Security credentials
For regulated utilities, where your data lives matters. ISO 27001:2022, Cyber Essentials Plus, UK data residency, and G-Cloud listing are the marks of a vendor who's been through procurement, not just marketing.
How a shared platform survives staff change
Utility programmes run for years. The Cambridge NSIP and the Sizewell C construction timeline stretch across decades. In that time, team members change. What stays is the platform.
Institutional memory held in a colleague's head or in a spreadsheet on a shared drive that nobody's maintained since 2021 is institutional risk. A platform that holds every interaction against the right stakeholder record means the relationship survives the handover.
National Grid runs Tractivity for hundreds of users across the UK and the US East Coast. SSEN scaled from 15 users to over 200 since 2018. In both cases, the platform is the continuity.
What efficiency gains look like in practice
On average, teams using Tractivity report a 20% improvement in stakeholder management efficiency, equivalent to £5,000 to £8,200 per professional per year. The methodology: two hours per day of manual work removed (report building, data mining, updating records, managing communications permissions) across a three-person team at average salaries.
For a utility managing ten or more staff across a major programme, that's a material reduction in overhead, and time returned to the work that actually requires human judgement.
Transport for the South East put a comparable number on it; less than a quarter of the time previously spent on stakeholder management, compared with their spreadsheet workflow.
How an SRM works in practice for utilities
Tractivity is used by water companies, DNOs, gas networks, and energy operators across the UK, including Anglian Water, EDF Energy, National Grid, SSEN, Severn Trent, and Northern Gas Networks.
If you're managing stakeholder engagement across utility programmes and want to see how the platform works in practice, we'd be glad to show you.
Book a demo, and we'll walk you through it with your sector and your programmes in mind.
Frequently asked questions
