Ofwat recently published two reports highlighting the role that water companies can play in helping to deliver water efficiency savings.

The first looks at water efficiency incentives for developers. Ofwat is proposing requiring all water companies in England and Wales to offer a financial water efficiency incentive to developers in PR24 that go beyond the Building Regulations water efficiency standards. However, they have decided not to specify either a minimum threshold to trigger the incentive or its amount.

The second is a summary of water companies’ published plans for household charging trials. Ofwat has been encouraging water companies to undertake trials of various water tariffs, with one of the aims being to see if they can be useful in reducing water demand. A range of large-scale trials are either underway or planned – including the use of seasonal tariffs where customers pay more for water when demand is high in summer, and rising block tariffs where customers pay a higher unit rate for water the more you use.