Is the Water White Paper a new vision for water? 

22 January 2026

The Water White Paper commits to delivering the thrust of the Cunliffe Review. If implemented extensively, it should improve on the current approach to managing water and the state of rivers, lakes, seas and water resources. But is it really the “radical transformation” government claims, asks policy director Alastair Chisholm?

If you digested the Cunliffe and Corry reviews last year, there won’t be any surprises in the White Paper. In its investor friendly tone, it’s made many campaigners angrier confirming no prospect of change to the privatised model and will broadly please or relieve the water industry. And the White Paper points in the right direction from an integrated water management perspective, both at local and regional level.

Joined up

There is welcome recognition (from government rather than external parties) that water management has been too siloed in the past. Also, that addressing things in a more collaborative way and closer to their source (termed “pre-pipe” – as opposed to end-of-pipe) will be more effective and cost-effective.

This will materialise partly through the proposed regional planning function which should bring a wider group of water-impacting bodies into the decision-making process on where effort and money get focused, reducing duplication and conflicting priorities. There will be a role for slightly better-resourced grass roots catchment partnerships. Also, through “greater emphasis” on measures such as awareness on sewer abuse that causes blockages, water efficiency, sustainable drainage and wider rainwater management.

Regulatory approach

There is a clear emphasis on getting ahead of the kinds of failures that are a substantial part of the water industry’s poor public image. Asset mapping, condition assessment and resilience standards will be a key means of the regulator ensuring pollution, leakage, water outages other failures reduce in frequency.

And that regulator is, of course, the new integrated water regulator that will be set up over the next year and more, comprising the Environment Agency’s water function, Natural England’s water function, Ofwat and the Drinking Water Inspectorate. Structure for the Welsh regulator will be different, reflecting its devolved regulatory landscape.

The regulator will have a more supervisory approach to its regulation of water companies lending a deeper understanding of their context (in terms of challenges and operating conditions) to regulatory levers. This will need a chief engineer in the economic regulation function and that answers past criticisms that Ofwat’s work has been lacking in appreciation of real-world engineering realities.

The approach should enable a more bespoke set of directions to be applied to companies around improvements needed but also the ability to allow them the space to make those improvements without punitive measures that would be crippling.

Government frames this as the means to avoid the “cycle of decline” in which fines and prosecutions exacerbate failures through a “Performance Improvement Regime” and part of a more stable regulatory landscape to attract responsible investors in it for the long-term.

It’s also the means to avoid companies falling into the Special Administration Regime as far as possible. Campaigners frame it as government going soft and perpetuating pollution for profit.

Part of that more predictable landscape is a longer planning horizon for the business planning cycle (though some might say that exists already through water company strategic direction statements) although the five-year price review will continue.

‘Open Monitoring’ is one of the quid pro quos to this certainty. More data in the public domain, increasingly in real-time will, alongside more unannounced inspections, remove the blight of over-reliance on ‘operator self-monitoring’. For water companies this may be an uncomfortable transition (as with publication of storm overflows data in recent years) but in the long-term could support a rebuilding of trust if performance improves (which it should, given the big increase in spending in the sector).

It may help to build appreciation of some of the complexities involved in running an asset base that stretches into hundreds of thousands of miles of pipes and many thousands of treatment works, and how these are impacted by external factors.

Rate of progress

After years of bashing water companies, government appears to recognise that it will have to own these reforms and the progress they bring. And it knows this won’t be quick or easy.

It’s also acknowledged water health and resilience can’t be put in a silo but is heavily influenced by urban development, climate change and other factors. It says: “As part of this more open and collaborative approach to reform… We will play a role in ensuring the public understand the complexity of addressing long-standing challenges – that there are inherent trade-offs to be managed in the system, and that fundamental change takes time.”

What government will need then, is to be able to demonstrate real progress in establishing its new regulatory framework and approach by the next election. Alongside this it will need water companies to have delivered the vast majority of the planned infrastructure improvements approved at the end of 2024 and that figures on things like storm overflow discharges, mains leakage and serious pollutions are starting to trend lower. It admits to being uncertain over supply chain capacity to enable that, but it needs success to help justify unpopular bill increases.

What’s missing from the long list of pledges is a National Water Strategy. A Cunliffe recommendation, this would have set the strategic direction across the water system as a whole. Perhaps in the Secretary of State’s mind the White Paper is just that. But it’s thin on anything beyond the water industry (agriculture gets one page of 50, highway runoff a few lines and chalk streams a couple of sentences).

With over 500 pages of government-commissioned reviews preceding the White Paper, the subject matter (bar the ownership elephant in the room) has been gone over comprehensively. Revised strategic direction will come though, in the form of an updated Strategic Policy Statement to Ofwat (before it transitions) and ministerial direction to the Environment Agency. Allied to the White Paper those should be enough.

What might be more important than an additional national strategy is whether or not policy and regulation on new development, agriculture and urban runoff fall into line with the tone of what’s being put in place for the water industry.

The transition plan

As government says, “delivering [the reforms] successfully requires more than ambition. A structured plan for reform is essential”. It claims to want to implement as many of them as quickly as possible. It commits to produce a joint Transition Plan with Wales later this year.

The plan will deliver a clear roadmap, clarify roles and responsibilities, establish buy-in from the various organisations involved with delivery, set guidance on how to create the necessary capacity to deliver the changes and establish a governance process to oversee the transition.

It will focus on the strategic direction for regulators and water companies, updated guidance for the various water industry business planning components, the operational frameworks for the regional planning process, as well as those for the new regulator and its supervisory approach, the form and duration of the next water industry price review, necessary legislative change, the transition process itself, a stakeholder engagement process to support the transition, and finally the expected timings of various components of the transition.

Radical transformation?

If the public and campaigners wanted to see a stronger regulatory landscape to straitjacket the privatised water industry, then they’re likely to feel very short changed. There will be more monitoring, more regulatory scrutiny of that monitoring. But government wants there to be a "holistic" mix of regulatory response to failure so that poorly performing water companies aren’t crippled by fines.

Generally, the White Paper commits to taking forward all the headlines from both the Cunliffe and the Corry reviews. Of course, it doesn’t answer every one of Cunliffe’s 88 recommendations but much of that may yet come through the Transition Plan. Is it a radical transformation? Certainly not radical enough for some, but it’s enough to be a challenge to deliver by 2029.

Looking back at A Fresh Water Future’s ten headline recommendations they’ve all been addressed to a greater or lesser extent. That’s not to say they’ve been delivered. That will take a major programme of transition. It will also need wider government to fully back the White Paper’s commitments, both in terms of resource, and on policy alignment.

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• For a deeper dive into the details of the White Paper, click here.

Alastair Chisholm is director of policy at CIWEM