Pennon to launch an action plan on Levelling Up

Pennon Group is to become the first water company to put in place an “Opportunity Action Plan” to support the Levelling Up agenda. The news followed Pennon joining the Purpose Coalition last month.

The Purpose Coalition sits alongside the Social Mobility Pledge, co-founded in 2018 by Justine Greening, which works to encourage businesses to play a strategic role on how they create opportunities to help level up Britain. The Purpose Coalition brings together a growing number of businesses and universities who are leading the drive on Britain’s twin challenges of levelling up and reaching net zero.

Pennon’s Opportunity Action Plan will set out a strategy for how it can use its organisation to spread opportunity to the maximum effect for communities and small businesses throughout the South West. It will measure the impact using the Levelling Up Goals framework.

Launched last month by the Purpose Coalition, this aims to provide a universal benchmark to track progress and is the first common framework to provide visibility of the individual and collective effort of businesses and universities. The Levelling Up Goals seek to drive equality of opportunity at key life stages, from early years through to careers, and to address barriers to opportunity such as by closing the digital divide and health and wellbeing inequality.