Opportunities for catchment partnerships and water companies to work together for the benefit of people, the environment and local economies. A ‘note’ from the Environment Agency, Water UK and CaBA outlines their vision in a timely fashion geared to the PR19 process.

CaBA: ‘This note is for you if you work in a water company or as part of a catchment partnership. It will help explain why a catchment based approach can help your work benefit people, the environment and local economies. It builds upon a previous note describing the benefits of collaborative working between water industry and CaBA partnerships.

Water companies submit their final business plans for the period 2020-2025 in September 2018. Ofwat will make its final determination on prices in 2019. The Environment Agency and Natural England provided water companies with a strategic steer on the environment, resilience and flood risk for business planning purposes in WISER. This sets out the action we would like to see from the water companies to tackle these challenges: through their investments; decisions; and the daily operations they run. In particular WISER asks them to do three things:

• ensure their own environmental performance is excellent
• help protect and enhance the wider environment
• further improve our resilience to drought and flooding

Water company business plans will set out a company’s strategy and key investment areas. There are key opportunities for water companies to increase the resilience of the natural environment that they rely on and complement delivery of their environmental obligations through partnerships and catchment approaches.

It elaborates ideas in four main areas of work including:

• Managing pollution and enhancing water quality, river flows and biodiversity and habitats
• Improving resilience of water company assets where they are at risk of flooding, coastal erosion and water outages
• Creating capacity within water and wastewater networks and improving water efficiency to accommodate future development
• Reducing flooding where the public sewer network is part of the source or pathway.

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