CIWEM's recent visit to 10 Downing Street

04 March 2025

CIWEM's recent trip to 10 Downing Street comes at a pivotal time for the water and environmental sector, CIWEM director of policy Alastair Chisholm reports

We were very pleased to be invited last month to Number 10 Downing Street to meet the Prime Minister’s water & environment advisers. The purpose of our visit was to discuss some of the key challenges and opportunities facing the water and environmental sector, both on behalf of our members and as an independent and trusted organisation in this sector.

CIWEM CEO Anna Daroy, along with the policy team (Alastair Chisholm, Paul Shaffer and Catherine Moncrieff) set out The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM)'s position that proactive water management is essential to achieving the Government’s growth and housing ambitions in a water resilient way.

Water demand management

One topic which we were keen to highlight was water demand management, in the context of the current focus on building new reservoirs. A recent report delivered by CIWEM, in partnership with Public First and the Ofwat Innovation Fund project Enabling Water Smart Communities (EWSC), showed that, with these reservoirs not coming on stream for another 10-15 years, water scarcity constraints could limit new housing target delivery.

This limitation would have a potential economic growth impact of £25bn in the south and east over the next five years, including:

• £18.3bn in lost construction-related economic activity.
• £6.3bn in diminished land value uplift.
• £344m in reduced productivity gains in high-value areas.

However, the roll out of water smart (water efficient, with rainwater harvesting and reuse) homes could help to enable £20bn of this.

We therefore consider that water efficient homes are a genuine enabler of the Government’s housing and growth ambitions, and through the EWSC project we are keen to facilitate conversations with developers to help bring this forward.

A Fresh Water Future

In our landmark report, A Fresh Water Future, we demonstrated that a more coordinated approach to joining up land use, water and environmental planning and governance is needed to unlock better and more cost-effective outcomes for economy, society and environment.

We are therefore pleased that many of the themes raised in A Fresh Water Future have been noticed in recent months by the Government, including within the Independent Water Commission’s Call for Evidence (launched last week) as part of the Cunliffe Review.

Within the Cunliffe Review, there are some key areas where we would like to see progress made. These include:

• Recommendations for improved coordination of planning/management of the various contributors to challenges in the water sector. This should cover the alignment of regulatory frameworks, statutory duties, planning read-across relevant sectors, monitoring, and funding and financing. This would ideally be supported by a modest increase in funding for catchment partnerships.
• A more holistic approach to regulating and financing the outcomes from Nature-based Solutions, particularly where they can be shown to deliver against wider policy objectives, for example carbon reduction and flood prevention.
• Progress implementing sustainable drainage (SuDS) in new housing and existing urban areas as part of a ‘sponge cities’ focus on managing rainwater where it falls. This would achieve water resilience outcomes for both resources in areas of scarcity as well as flood risk.

As well as engaging with the Independent Water Commission, we will also be updating A Fresh Water Future following on from last December’s conference – so stay tuned. You can read the latest version of the report here.

Our membership

Alongside government intervention, water and environment professionals will be crucial to achieving the improvements needed to the water and environmental sector. We therefore welcomed the opportunity to represent our members’ skills and knowledge when speaking with the Prime Minister’s officials in this recent meeting.

We will also be reaching out to our members through our specialist panels and groups in crafting a CIWEM response to the Call for Evidence, and we will be encouraging our members to get involved directly by completing the Call for Evidence online form.

We are proud to represent the most extensive pool of multidisciplinary water-environment experts in the country and look forward to bringing this to bear on constructive policy advancement over the coming year.

Author: Alastair Chisholm, director of policy at CIWEM