This speech was given by Aileen Armstrong, Senior Director, Company Performance and Price Control on 20 March 2023 at the Future of Utilities: Water conference.

The challenges for companies at PR24 You’ll hear a lot today about the pressures the sector is facing. Water resources. River and bathing water quality. Climate change. Cost of living pressures. The issues themselves aren’t new. But in the face of continued public concern the sector’s every action is given greater scrutiny.

Recently, there’s been close attention on how companies are dealing with the pressures on water resources. And there’s strong, continuing concern about sewage discharges.

We’ve seen from our own research that all of this has led to a steady decline in trust in water companies. The scale of the challenge is already evident. The UK Government has set a range of targets for the water sector as part of the Environmental Improvement Plan. By twenty-fifty, the sector needs to have eliminated ecological harm from sewage discharges, and leakage must have been halved.

Read the rest of the speech here.

Ofwat has also provided responses to PR24 Business plan data table queries.