Yorks Water recruits head of marketing

Yorkshire Water has appointed rail company GNER’s marketing manager Malcolm Brown to the new role of head of marketing.

Brown, who joins as sales and marketing manager in January, will report to Yorkshire Water director of customer services Tracy Flanders.

It is understood Brown will take over some of the responsibilities of Simon Ingham, who is taking up a post outside the marketing department.

A Yorkshire Water spokesman says the sales and marketing department has been created in the light of proposals to introduce competition to the water industry, though he points out this is a complex issue which may take some time to be resolved.

The water company is in the process of rebuilding its image after the drought fiasco of the summer of 1995, when it wrote to 3,000 local companies suggesting they could save water by relocating staff and giving them longer holidays, and sought to limit 400,000 customers to supplies on alternate days.

Chief executive Trevor Newton claimed he had not had a bath or shower for three months in an effort to save water. But he was later forced to step down when it transpired that he had used facilities in his parents’ home outside the Yorkshire area.