Water Resources in the South East: time to move future ambitions to action

The year is 1996.  Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, are getting divorced; John Major is our Prime Minister; Ebay and Ask Jeeves are launched onto the unsuspecting world – as are the Spice Girls who scored their first number one hit with “Wannabee”.

But there was another important event which, while it didn’t make the headlines, has seen something of a ripple effect in how we plan to make sure there is enough water for customers, society and the environment. 1996 was the year the Water Resources in the South East (WRSE) group was formed to identify where, when and how water could be shared and moved around the increasingly parched south east.

Today, the WRSE is 22-years-old and still going strong.  It has expanded to include six water companies – Affinity Water, South East Water, Southern Water, SES Water, Portsmouth Water and Thames Water – working alongside the Environment Agency, Ofwat, the Consumer Council for Water, Natural England and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Crucially, the WRSE has delivered what it was originally challenged to do. Today, the south east has its very own water grid with almost 60 transfers – within and between water companies – moving over 100 million litres of water every day.

Equally important has been its work to reduce the amount of water that is lost or wasted so there is more to go around – whether it’s finding and fixing more leaks on the pipe network or encouraging customers to use less through metering programmes and ambitious water efficiency initiatives.

More than that, the WRSE has driven new levels of collaboration and co-operation to develop the use of cutting-edge techniques that look 60 years’ ahead to find the best value solutions.  Its work is giving water companies the confidence to consider adopting and delivering those solutions through their individual Water Resources Management Plans.

Since 2017, Create 51 has been part of the evolving and exciting journey that WRSE’s senior leaders have been on.  We helped translate a 20-year journey and the latest round of complex modelling into a clear and compelling narrative.

But the WRSE is not standing still and is already thinking about where it needs to go next; in fact, having just appointed an independent chair – former Affinity Water CEO Simon Cocks – it is leading the charge on the future role of regional groups, within a growing national interest in UK PLC’s water needs and infrastructure.

Much of that growing national interest has been crystallised in the National Infrastructure Commission’s recent report which predicts that England’s home and businesses could face having their water supplies cut off in times of severe drought, if the water industry does not improve infrastructure, leakage and water efficiency.

At the heart of the NIC’s recommendations is the need to plan for greater resilience to drought i.e. up to a 1 in 500-year event; increase the rate of metering and make it more widespread; and the need for a more ambitious long-term target for reducing leakage – by 50%.

That said, the NIC recognises that while demand management is a crucial first step it is not enough on its own to increase resilience – it needs to be delivered via new infrastructure.

Cue Create 51 again, this time to organise a timely strategic round table event for the sector’s senior leaders – company CEOs, representatives from Water Resources East, Water Resources South West and Water Resources North, government advisors, regulators and consumer champions – to discuss everything from the NIC’s recommendations, progressing more supply-side solutions, to funding mechanisms and moving to regional plans supported by a national framework.

The answers are there for the making and we saw tantalizing glimpses of what some of those are during the round table discussions; furthermore, we saw a real willingness from government and regulators to work with water companies to remove the constraints that can sometimes paralyse their ability to deliver new supply-side infrastructure.

That said, everyone around that table was left in no doubt it’s time to move from ambition to action. So, watch this space – and in the meantime you can find out more at wrse.org.uk.