Cunliffe’s Independent Water Commission could shift the dial – with the right government commitment

23 July 2025

The Independent Water Commission final report has the potential to shift the dial forward in water management. But not how some campaigners will have wanted to see, and subject, still, to how energetically the whole of government backs its recommendations, writes Alastair Chisholm.

Sir Jon Cunliffe unapologetically compared his report – in all its 465 pages and 88 recommendations – to a Russian novel such is its length. He described it as technocratic. He also said it was the easy job and that government’s follow-up will be harder – coming as it will with difficult decisions on everything from regulator reconfiguration, through new and updated legislation, to politically unpalatable decisions on water investment beyond the current five-year spending round.

It’s all of those things. It’s considered and detailed and sensible, given the scope he was presented with. And it offers the opportunity to shift the dial on water management.

Elephant in the room

At the launch, Cunliffe addressed Jumbo pretty directly. Knowing how hot an issue that of ownership models is with many stakeholders and that his brief explicitly excluded wholesale change of the ownership model, Cunliffe said no single reform – however radical – would address the plethora of problems in the water space.

Of course, and understandably, many highly visible campaigners are sore and angry. They see private ownership as the single biggest driver of the levels of pollution and infrastructure decay playing out daily across social and mainstream media and the single biggest game-changer. Initiatives like the People’s Commission on the Water Sector focused heavily (though not exclusively) in this space.

But this government has never signalled this was territory it was prepared to step into. Not before the election and certainly not after. That leaves us with how to make the current system better – a position we approached A Fresh Water Future from back in 2023/4, cognisant of that reality.

Water system vindication

Reviewing A Fresh Water Future, it’s encouraging that many of its observations and recommendations about the current system have been echoed and built upon in far more detail by the Commission team.

That there needed to be a review to pick through all the knots and scar tissue of three decades of legislative layering. A review of company governance. Of regulators and regulation. Of policy priorities. Of use of technology and how asset maintenance is and isn’t working. Of spatial engagement, planning and management.

An also, of policy priorities. Here, Cunliffe has strayed beyond scope (or stretched it a little) in recognising the importance of agriculture, transport, housing and other areas of economic activity that have a serious bearing on the health and resilience of our water bodies and cycle (also flagged by A Fresh Water Future).

And it’s here that the depth and detail of the review vindicates much that we at CIWEM have been observing and advocating for over the last decade or so. Some fine and technocratic detail but also validation of the assertion that unless government addresses some fundamentals in these non-water industry areas we may as well pack it all in.

That would be the case whatever the ownership model for the water industry.

And as you pick through the detail of the 465 pages and the 88 recommendations, you spot different things – away from the big-ticket headlines like super-regulators – that never remotely registered in any of the media coverage, and that I’m not going to comment on here.

These are things that will feel like deckchair-shifting to many and presented as such by campaigners. Individually small and innocuous maybe, but collectively substantive.

By way of example: Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) in new developments should be mandatory. Say no more!

Government should review the automatic right to connect new development to the sewer. Are we in 2010?!

We should have compulsory smart metering. Hallelujah!

We should have more rainwater harvesting in new development. The list goes on – there’s an awful lot on how wider government policy should stop dithering and backsliding and get on with driving forward good integrated water management practice. And then if detailed economic regulation is your thing, geek out on all that, too.

The difficult job

What really matters now, is what happens next. To answer critics who say this modern “Great Stink moment” and opportunity to reset the sector is a damp squib and a fraud, those right at the top of government need to back all these proposed reforms.

Sir Keir Starmer and Number 10 trumpeted the review and government’s commitment to change. Steve Reed was on a days-long media round. Government has immediately committed to implementing four of the recommendations.

But there are some areas where we will need to see a shift in current behaviours from government to enable the potential progress contained in the report and its recommendations to be realised.

Not least in really getting stuck into agricultural and highway runoff pollution, and in properly regulating so new housing is water efficient and has futureproof drainage systems. And, in resourcing a bigger regulator with more capacity, able to pay better to ensure it has the heft to prevent the wrongs and failings of the past.

Those things will be telling. Government’s response will come in a white paper and implementation plan in October. For this detailed review to translate into credible reform, it will have to show real commitment to implementation.

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• Read the final Independent Water Commission report here.
• Alastair joined Niki Roach on a special edition of the Planet Possible podcast this week to discuss the outcomes and impacts of this report. Listen here.
• CIWEM will be shortly publishing an update to A Fresh Water Future, as well as holding a conference (following last year's successful event) in December. Sign up here for the latest A Fresh Water Future updates.

Alastair Chisholm is director of policy at CIWEM