Ofwat consults on Innovation Fund approach for 2022-25

Main changes to existing approach:

1. A new annual £4 million competition for early-stage ideas direct to innovators.

We propose to allocate a portion of funding (about £4 million a year) to a new competition focused on enabling and supporting earlier stage idea development.

This new competition will target primarily innovators and not require a partnership with a water company to enter.

We would invite entries of up to £250,000 and impose minimal eligibility criteria, such as no intellectual property rights conditions or mandatory financial contributions.

2. Maintain the annual £36 million competition, with adjustments to some entry rules to encourage wider participation

In our Water Breakthrough Challenge 2 competition, water companies in England and Wales and their partners could bid for funding through two streams.

Catalyst Stream: Approximately £5 million was available. Individual entries could bid for £100,000 – £1 million. And it had a slightly relaxed intellectual property rights (IPR) arrangements: owners of background IPR were able to charge a licence fee, where this was required to deliver the benefit of the foreground IPR.
Transform Stream: Approximately £30 million was available. Individual entries could bid for £1 million – £10 million. Our standard IPR arrangements applied.