National Trust and United Utilities Memorandum of Understanding

The National Trust (NT) is Europe’s largest conservation charity and the organisation protects and cares for places so that people and nature can thrive. It is a major landowner in the United Kingdom, looking after more than 250,000 hectares of land and working with communities and partners to protect nature, beauty and history in towns, cities, villages and countryside. In the North West of England, the National Trust is a significant land owner with 53,000 hectares of land. 

United Utilities (UU) is proud to be the longest serving FTSE 100 company in the region and supplies water and wastewater services to over 7 million customers in North West England. It is the custodian of over 56,000 hectares of land in the North West and Derbyshire, used primarily as water catchment. Its approach to catchments is driven under a place based planning approach, underpinned by its Catchment Systems Thinking initiative (CaST), where effective partnerships will play a key role in helping realise wider social and environmental benefits. 

We will seek out collaboration opportunities where we identify strategic overlap and where working together can achieve more. This may include: 

• Delivery of joint landscape–scale change across and beyond our respective land for meaningful nature and climate action that builds catchment resilience 

• Innovation - Exploring, commissioning research and testing approaches that helps find solutions to areas of joint interest and challenge including the water environment 

• Collaborating to better manage joint land management issues such as incident management, working with tenants, and influencing policy 

• Acting inclusively to support all people and communities, to confidently access and enjoy our landholdings   

 We may unlock these opportunities by:

• Exploring collaborative funding opportunities such as developing joint bids to deliver mutual objectives 

• Collaborating to raise awareness and deliver tailored communications which influences more sustainable behaviour across the catchment 

• Providing thought leadership to bring together our organisational ambition and expertise to help set direction, pace and share with others  

• Using our joint convening power of bringing together stakeholders and partners to deliver change for the better at a catchment scale 

• Building a culture of collaborative working; sharing expertise, knowledge and experience to learn from each other and improve our joint impact 

Already, there are several places where NT and UU work together, where our estates are neighbours and geographic specific projects such as Riverlands and the Cheshire strategic liaison group operate and Wild Ennerdale. We won’t constrain our collaboration to our land holdings only and will work together with current partners and landowners for maximum delivery such as through partnerships like the Great North Bog and take opportunities to deliver our objectives through new partnerships where appropriate. 

Our aim is to focus on collaboration where clear additional value and mutual benefits can be achieved. We will seek out opportunities for continuing existing collaboration and exploring new.  

We will seek to jointly influence regional and local plans and policies to drive the outcomes above e.g. Nature North and Local Nature Recovery Strategies.  

We will look to inform and engage one another in strategic thinking and development, using each other as ‘trusted’ critical friends to help test and shape thinking around key topics where appropriate. 

A core principle of the partnership is to use a facilitating approach with Directors enabling teams to develop collaborative working through delivery rather than adopting a formal ‘top down’ programme approach.  This will allow our organisations to work in a flexible and integrated way, developing and building effective working relationships, at a strategic and local level. 

 Meeting regularly will ensure that the collaboration remains strong, by providing an aligned vision, a route for escalation or conflict resolution and clarity of day-to-day contacts. Our joint discussions will be kept flexible and organised on an ‘as needed basis’ through the following groups: 

• Strategic oversight of MoU – UU / NT Directors to meet half yearly 
  
  
• Place based liaison groups UU/NT for Cheshire/Manchester, Lancashire, Cumbria and the Peak District which will meet regularly 
  
  
• Local day to day interactions between UU/NT colleagues  

We will seek to resolve any issues locally or through the place based liaison groups only elevating issues that would have a significant impact to the Directors meeting via the ‘Leads’ in each organisation. 

To enable this approach, we will bring our key operational colleagues together annually to review progress, celebrate successes, share best practice and develop the next phase of collaborative work. 

NT/UU Directors will commit to review the effectiveness of these working relationships on an annual basis. If they are no longer fit for purpose or ‘adding value’ to our respective work areas either organisation can end the collaboration at the next Directors meeting. 

We will identify opportunities to communicate the beneficial work realised by working together, through both traditional and social media. The aim will be to underpin this with close working relationships between the respective communication and media teams. Each organisation will be given sight of any branded media and publicity that relates to the other to approve before it goes live.  

The organisations will agree protocols on handling information internally and externally as it can be sometimes sensitive. 

Each organisation commits to: 

• Attend and contribute to joint meetings as agreed 

• Work to gain internal permissions within NT and UU to move jointly agreed initiatives forward 

• Share details of significant activities and events planned in the areas of joint activity and on UU/NT land 

• Explore ways to share information and align processes to improve collaboration effectiveness (such as system access, use of branding, legal documents) 

• We will use local specific contracts (as required) which will cover legal areas such as intellectual property rights and general data protection regulations on a case-by-case basis 

This non-binding, non-exclusive, mutually beneficial agreement is made on 8th July 2025 between the National Trust and United Utilities (the “parties”). The parties wish to record the basis on which they will collaborate with each other on the Project (as defined below). This MoU sets out the intended objectives of the Project, the principles of collaboration and the parties’ respective responsibilities and activities.  It will provide a reference point throughout the Project. 

 This MoU does not imply any legal partnership, joint venture, or contract, nor does it affect each party’s ability to work with other parties. Neither party shall hold itself out as agent for the other party and neither party shall have authority to enter into any agreement or incur any liability or obligations on behalf of the other party at any time.