Ofwat: ‘This information note provides an overview of the individual representations produced for each company’s draft water resources management plan 2019 (WRMP) in our role as a statutory consultee and identifies the common response themes and areas of challenge.
Executive summary
WRMPs provide an overview of water companies’ resilience to drought and the investment required to improve or maintain that resilience. The plans are a key input to water company business plans which we assess through our price review. The most recent set of plans (WRMP19) were released for public consultation in spring this year and we reviewed the draft plans as a statutory consultee. Our responses are available on our website.
While aspects of most company plans are in line with our expectations and good practice, there are a number of areas where companies fall short. In our responses to company plans we set out a clear challenge in areas where more evidence is required to convince us that plans deliver in the best interests of customers. Our challenges broadly fall into the following eight areas:
Our challenges broadly fall into the following eight areas:
1: Customer participation – some companies need to do more to involve their customers in the WRMP process
2: Resilience – some draft plans did not sufficiently convince us that they will meet future drought and non-drought hazards effectively
3: Leakage – while short term leakage reduction ambition for most is good, there needs to be greater consideration of long term ambition
4: Water efficiency – there has been no step change in ambition for water efficiency over previous plans (WRMP14)
5: Third party options – some draft plans did not sufficiently convince us that third party options have been treated appropriately
6: Water trading – trading in the short term falls and larger trades are frequently delayed until later in the planning period
7: Regional solutions – some progress but regional solutions are typically delayed and this may be a missed opportunity
No Comment