Experiences of regional water resources planning

As pressures on our water resources mount and the need to share and develop new resources, increase efficiency and build resilience grows, a more nationally-coordinated approach to planning future water supplies was needed. Under the Environment Agency’s National Framework, regional groups were formed covering the whole of the country to build up a picture of future resources needs and moving beyond company-only water resources management planning.

As the development process for the first round of regional water resources plans enters its final stages, CIWEM’s Water Resources Specialist Panel convened a strategic discussion involving representatives of the groups, the National Framework Chair, as well as RAPID (the cross-water regulator body focused on fast-tracking major strategic resource schemes) to understand how the process had gone.

The national picture

Jean Spencer is the Independent Chair of the National Framework – the coordination group that pulls together the activities of the various regional groups. She points back to the 2016 Water UK long term planning framework as the origin of the thinking of the approach.

Planning for water resources is now focusing on being able to cope with a 1 in 500 year drought event; up from 1 in 200 for previous water resources management planning rounds, reflecting advice set out by the National Infrastructure Commission in 2018. The change to regional, cross-sector plans – a challenging and necessarily highly collaborative process – is fundamental to being able to achieve this.

Engagement on the regional plans began in early 2020 and the final plans will be published in September this year (2023). The process has been highly consultative as plans have been developed, shared in draft and finalised, considering the different regional variance in terms of size, population, demographics, personal consumption and proportion of water abstraction needed for public water supply as opposed to other use needs such as power, industry and agriculture.

Regions differ significantly in relation to how these characteristics impact them but they all face common challenges: Drought risk and the need to adapt, growing populations and pressure to reduce abstraction to protect the environment, as well as bearing down on leakage and demand for water. All regions have a supply: demand deficit in their projections for public water supply by 2050 though the challenges are most pronounced in the south and east.

Demand management and leakage reduction dominate many of the plans as the largest area for attention, with water efficiency and smart metering being crucial to achieving targets, beyond what delivering new infrastructure can achieve.

The expectation is – following the first round of plans – that regional groups will continue to maintain and prepare plans into the future, looking beyond company boundaries and working collaboratively to develop solutions to the climate and nature emergency. This will be driven by an updated National Framework once lessons have been identified, building on the first round on plans. RAPID will continue to drive forward strategic resource options through future rounds.

Round the regions

Regional planning isn’t a new concept and has been going on informally for many years. Water Resources South East (WRSE) has been at it the longest; unsurprising given the pressures the region faces.

The ‘emerging plan’ stage of the regional approach was found to be particularly useful for WRSE. Not present as a stage in company level water resources management plans, it helped bring out the issues in the region at an early stage and helped ensure there were no surprises later on in the development process. Stakeholder responses to the emerging plan were extensive and brought people into water resources planning in the South East who’d probably never been engaged before.

Everything the plan tries to do is driven by government policy ambitions which need to be delivered against. These are prescriptive, leaving little discretion for companies to try to achieve much else within the scope of their plans.

What is clear is that the customer bill impacts of meeting these ambitions are likely to be significantly higher than have been seen coming through the water resources management plans before. This is likely to pose challenges when set against the current economic climate and the other plans feeding into the PR24 business planning process.

There has been far more emphasis on water recycling, interconnectivity and transfers, and new storage and desalination solutions than in previous plans, explaining this significant bill impact. Such new infrastructure will not come without deliverability risks. Add climate change to this picture, alongside other pressures and planning for uncertainty becomes critically important.

Different adaptive planning pathways point to between 1 billion and 2.8 billion litres per day of water being needed in the region by 2075. In the shorter-term though – between 2025 and 2035 – 70% of the water required will have to come through leakage reduction and water efficiency savings. Those bigger infrastructure schemes simply can’t be delivered quickly enough to make a difference during this timeframe.

For Water Resources North (WReN), challenges are quite different, with some significant industrial areas in Humberside and Teeside and a smaller number of well-connected water companies (two water and sewerage companies and one small water-only company) with a relatively resilient public water supply system given the existence of Kielder reservoir and the high rainfall that occurs over upland areas.

This said, the region does face significant risk into the future linked to climate change and population growth amongst other factors meaning future plans look quite different to those which have existed in the past.

Overall water use is 81% public water supply with 13% being required for navigation in canals. 6% makes up agriculture, power and industrial use.

One of the biggest challenges the region faces relates to the environmental destination being targeted for abstraction reductions, alongside water quality. Elsewhere, transfers from the Severn-Trent into Yorkshire’s Sheffield water resource zone may be lost in future, meaning alternatives will need to be found.

Now, reducing leakage and demand are unlikely to be enough (something that was previously the mainstay of company water resources plans in the region), so even in what is considered a resilient region, new water resources – likely groundwater alongside additional transfers within the Yorkshire Grid – are thought to be needed.

The region is a focus for industrial growth, particularly in the green technology space with hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, battery technology and industrial clusters all likely to put additional demand on resources.

Water Resources East (WRE) is deliberately structured in a multi-sector way which brings in member organisations from across the region directly into the planning process. 30% of WRE’s funding comes from organisations and businesses other than water companies and this gives a strong level of focus on non-public water supply considerations. Over 180 organisations in total are members of WRE.

As with the South-East, this eastern region faces considerable projections of water shortfall by 2050 without action; a 640 million litres per day deficit to resolve. And demand will change fundamentally over this period. Public water supply forms the bulk of this, but agriculture and energy are also likely to grow significantly albeit the certainty over by how much is low.

The challenge of environmental protection – achieving flows that support good ecological status under the Water Framework Directive by 2050 through reduced abstractions – is by far the biggest challenge to water availability from existing sources. This is a big factor in the region’s adaptive planning conundrum.

Whilst there will be a major focus as in other regions on demand management and leakage reduction, new supply options are a major part of the plans, including new reservoirs to provide half of what’s required, desalination and water reuse schemes particularly in the Anglian Water area. Demand management and water reuse will do the short-term heavy lifting until these big infrastructure schemes can come on-stream.

Over the past year a range of flagship projects, such as the Norfolk Water Strategy, Future Fens Project and the Water for Tomorrow programme have focused on bringing different interests together to develop approaches to multi-sector working which can be built on within the wider regional water resources plan. The agriculture sector in particular has played a major part in this journey, helping WRE develop the best multi-sector plan that it can.

But it’s not just these wider sectors who’ve been on a journey. The approach has improved water company cooperation and alignment with improved information sharing, both between the companies but also within them, amongst different teams.

Water Resources West (WRW) is, like WReN, a very diverse area with a wide range of urban centres, sensitive habitats and designated sites, alongside industrial activity. However what distinguishes it is the cross-border nature of its resources, which are shared with parts of Wales.

As a cross-border group, WRW has to take into account not only English policy and regulation but also their Welsh equivalents. Sustainable management of natural resources (SMNR) is particularly prominent in Welsh legislation so this has influenced the plan significantly. This brings a strong focus on wellbeing, SMNR, and communities and these have been reflected strongly in decision-making processes.

Public water supply dominates as in the other regions, with navigation, agriculture, power and other industries also being significant water users. In common with other regions, environmental needs represent the area placing the greatest pressure on current resources. Climate change, population growth, and drought resilience also factor.

For WRW, leakage and demand reduction will make the biggest contribution to the additional 1.2 million litres a day extra which will need to be found.

WRW will be transferring water south, to WRSE via the Grand Union Canal and Severn-Thames transfers so they’re thinking not only about how they can solve challenges in their own region but also in others. In a big way this reflects the reality that there is a lower marginal cost in developing new resources in the west of the Country than in the south-east, provided there is a workable means to make the transfers.

WRW has found that in their region, the nature of non-public water supply needs demands a very local focus. The group has recognised that the approach needs to be genuinely multi-sector, particularly in order to achieve the catchment-level outcomes that are being targeted for the environment. Working closely with the regulators has been critical to this, alongside the other water-using sectors.

A regulator’s RAPID perspective

The regional coordination group has analysed how the regional planning approach has gone. Broadly this has been very positive and in particular the collaborative approach which has been achieved.

Clarity on the various milestones in the regional planning process is important, to ensure integration and minimise overlap with the other plans in development within the wider periodic review process.

Additionally, understanding boundaries in scope between regional plans and all other plans – from company WRMPs to drainage and wastewater management plans, wider strategic plans on issues such as environment and flood risk as well as other important stakeholder groups – can only be improved as the process moves forward into a second cycle.

Building on the cross-sector, collaborative approach will be a must but there is a strong recognition that this isn’t easy and may well need more funding to further improve. It’s also strongly recognised that the regions are different, with different sector drivers and pressures, stakeholder groups and geographical characteristics. Nevertheless, zeroing in on a more consistent governance model for groups is important, RAPID believes.

Ultimately, there is a need to ensure timely delivery of new infrastructure which will deliver long-term benefits for society and the environment in improved drought resilience across all water-users. So regional groups can never have too many options in their initial plans, from which to choose.

Innovation, technological advancement and efficient practices will all be essential to ensure value for money for customers particularly given the upward pressure on bills that are likely to come across the range of plans feeding into PR24.

Thanks to Jean Spencer (National Framework Chair), Trevor Bishop (WRSE), Granville Davies (WReN), Ben Fitzsimons (WRE), Richard Blackwell (WRW) and Mark Smith (for CIWEM) for their contributions.

For more information contact Director of Policy alastair.chisholm@ciwem.org

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