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This article was first published in the May 2016 UK edition of Accounting and Business magazine.

It was a fascination with numbers that drew Shetland-born Johanna Dow towards accountancy. In her final year at school, she saw the ACCA Qualification as the ideal opportunity to study and work at the same time. ‘It meant I was able to qualify at 21 instead of 24 or 25,’ she says.

She’s having a considerably longer wait – seven years and counting – for her current great goal: the full deregulation of the English non-domestic water market. Business Stream, the subsidiary of Scottish Water that she heads, supplies drinking and waste water services to Scotland’s non-domestic users, but its client base south of the border remains heavily restricted until April 2017 when the English non-domestic market is finally fully deregulated.

‘The Scottish government opened up the non-household market in April 2008,’ she explains. ‘But the English market only opens in April 2017, so there’s a nine-year lag. It means the likes of Thames Water, Anglian, United Utilities and all the other English suppliers are already in Scotland.’ And while rival utilities can try to secure Business Stream’s customers in Scotland, Business Stream cannot do the same in England until 2017.

The English non-domestic market has a limited degree of deregulation at the moment. Only very large customers (those using more than five megalitres of water a year) can switch supplier. ‘That equates to around 27,000 customers,’ says Dow.

The prize for Dow and Business Stream – where she has been working for nearly 10 years, first as finance director and, since October 2014, as chief executive – is enormous.

‘The English non-domestic market is eight times the size of Scotland’s, so it’s worth £2.5bn a year and has 1.2 million customers,’ Dow explains. ‘In Scotland, turnover is about £350m with 150,000 customers. It’s a huge market and we’ve waited eight to nine years for that market to open, so we’re really excited about it.’

Department store chain House of Fraser is an example of one customer that Business Stream is already supplying north and south of the border. But customers come in all shapes and sizes. ‘We go right from hairdressers at one end, where you’ve got a tap and a toilet, right the way through to large industrial users of water – such as [chemicals group] Ineos, with its Grangemouth manufacturing and refining operation. And with the English market opening, you’ve also got that geographical spread right from the top to the bottom of the UK.’

Open market

Having 23 rival operators in the market keeps you on your toes. ‘We have a big focus on water efficiency, so we help our customers use less of our product,’ Dow explains. ‘You would never get that without competition because how many monopolies would want customers to use less of their product?

‘If there’s a big multisite customer such as [supermarket chain] Morrisons, with stores spread across Scotland, we also look at things like producing a single bill that covers all their stores. That also wouldn’t have been available before the market opened.’

Ahead of English deregulation, Business Stream has been actively engaging with the UK government and the regulator, Ofwat, to ensure that the market is fair and that margins are protected. ‘We want to make sure that new entrants going into that English market are not unfairly disadvantaged against incumbents,’ Dow explains. ‘Retail margins are another big issue. At the moment, retail margins are incredibly low in England and we’re concerned that will not allow companies to deliver the benefits that customers expect.’

Fast-track

After qualifying with Perth-based accountancy firm Turnbull Kemp, Dow joined Dundee firm Henderson Loggie before moving into industry with energy group SSE. Following various roles in SSE’s telecoms, transmission and distribution businesses, she joined Scottish Water in 2002 as group finance manager. She was heavily involved in separating Scottish Water’s retail and wholesale activities and wrote the business plan for the retail business that was to become Business Stream.

‘At that stage, we didn’t even have a name and there were only four of us,’ Dow recalls. ‘It was amazing to set something up from scratch, build it and see it right the way through.’

After eight years as finance director, Dow was appointed chief executive in October 2014. She is also a member of the Customer Forum, an initiative designed to shape the future of water and sewerage services in Scotland. Dow has also been recognised as one of the UK’s top business women by the UK-wide First Women Awards.

She does agree that the industry is male-dominated but says this is just a fact of life. ‘It doesn’t make the job any harder to do – it’s just the reality. I’m not the type of person who sees the number of trophies in the cabinet as a measure of success. I’m more focused on keeping our customers happy and making sure this a good place for people to work.’

Victoria Masterson, journalist