Pennon Group plc is a UK-based environmental infrastructure company in the water utilities sector, overseeing five major subsidiaries in a heavily regulated industry subject to oversight from multiple regulators. For its independent advisory panel, keeping sensitive planning materials secure and accessible to outside experts is essential to delivering genuine, well-informed scrutiny of the business.
Becca Lee, Community Manager at Pennon Group, led the adoption of Diligent Boards for the panel. She set up a dedicated Diligent Boards environment with its Data Room module, replacing a fragmented, email-based process with one secure channel for sharing materials, collecting questions and keeping every panel member engaged from anywhere.
Pennon's independent advisory panel keeps regulatory measures on track and keeps the customer voice embedded in company decisions. Made up of external experts in government, water, environmental regulation, customer experience, sustainability and financial regulation, the panel must stay separate from Pennon's internal systems to challenge the business genuinely, including on sensitive topics.
For a time, Lee's team used a general cloud-based document manager, until Pennon's IT department shut it down over the exposure created by giving external users cloud access. The fallback was email, which wasn't secure or controlled enough for sensitive, time-critical materials. Administrative work piled up too: Before each session, Lee gathered feedback from multiple email threads and chased busy panel members who couldn't always join live.
The recommendation to adopt Diligent Boards came from within Pennon's own leadership, who had seen the Pennon Board Secretariat already use the platform successfully for the main board. Rather than join that existing board environment and risk permission conflicts, Lee's team set up a dedicated Diligent Boards site for the panel, phasing in standard board operations before introducing further use cases.
The platform also supports Data Room, now central to the panel's rapid-turnaround "deep dive" sessions. Materials go up in advance, and panel members add questions directly into Data Room instead of scattering them across inboxes. Sessions are recorded and securely uploaded so members who miss a live session can listen back and contribute.
"I literally don't know what we would have done otherwise. You can't send recordings over email because they're too massive, and that would also lead to security concerns." - Becca Lee, Community Manager, Pennon Group
Moving the panel onto a secure, dedicated platform has given Pennon Group a more consistent, controlled way to keep external experts engaged.
Key benefits include:
"It's hard to quantify the benefit we get by using a secure tool for board operations, but as an organization operating in a highly regulated space, the benefit of risk mediation is immeasurable." - Becca Lee, Community Manager, Pennon Group
What began as a search for a more secure way to share documents evolved into a connected way of working, with secure board operations, Data Room collaboration and AI-powered minute-taking now running on one platform.
Download the case study to discover how Pennon Group used a secure, dedicated platform to connect its independent advisory panel, speed up time-critical reviews and reduce manual administrative work, all in one secure environment.
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