Final Water Resources Management Plan 2024
Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water provides an essential public service to over three million people across most of Wales, and adjoining parts of England.
We are the sixth largest of the ten regulated water and sewerage companies in England and Wales and are unique in that we are a not-for-profit business with no shareholders. This means we are guided solely by what is in the best long-term interests of our customers and the environment.
We know that customers rely on us to deliver high-quality, safe and reliable services every day, no matter what is thrown at us by the weather or other operational challenges. They also need to be able to trust us to be planning well ahead, to ensure those services are sustainable and resilient over many decades to come.
Why we prepare Water Resource Management Plans
The water that flows from the taps of our customers comes from a variety of water sources. Most of our water is supplied from our reservoirs although we abstract significant volumes from lowland river sources such as the River Wye in southeast Wales and the River Dee in north Wales. Groundwater accounts for less than five percent of our supplies at a Company level but at a local level, may be the whole supply.
The amount of water we can rely upon is not only affected by the weather conditions each year but also the amount of water that we can store and the natural response of rivers and aquifers to rainfall.
Whatever the source of water, we pass this through a water treatment works before distributing the treated water through our network of pipes to houses and businesses. This can be a complex process, particularly where we have many customers and a variety of sources that can feed into a water supply area. There are however significant benefits to having alternative supplies that can be drawn upon if we have problems with the raw water sources, treatment works or our distribution system.
To provide water to our customers all day every day, we need to make sure there is always sufficient water resource to meet the demand for water especially during periods of drought and so planning for future needs is critical.
Like all water companies, we update our Water Resource Management Plan (WRMP) every five years. This Plan describes the basis for ensuring sufficient water supplies over the long-term. This incorporates the latest evidence on the future demand for water and water resource reliability, takes full account of environmental legislation which aims to protect and improve the environment in which we live and for the potential impact of climate change, through use of the best available science and technology.
Developing our 2024 Water Resources Management Plan
Regular engagement with stakeholders has been a key feature in the development of our WRMP24, with early discussions helping to ensure that we reflect the priorities of Government and our regulators. We launched our formal pre-consultation on this Plan on the 7th February 2022, sending an overview of our Plan and supporting information to over 300 stakeholders. The consultation ran for 6 weeks, closing on the 21st of March.
Following submission of our draft WRMP24 to Welsh Government in October 2022, we ran a full public consultation for 14 weeks from the 16th November 2022 through to the 22nd February 2023. The main report, together with the planning tables, SEA/HRA reports, and a bilingual non-technical summary were published on our website. During the consultation process we:
- Contacted over 300 organisations
- Contacted all relevant Members of the Senedd and UK Parliament
- Publicised the Plan via our Welsh Water social media
- Presented the Plan to Welsh Water’s Independent Environment Advisory Panel (IEAP)
- Ran a dedicated stakeholder engagement event (online) on the 24th January 2023.
Following closure of the consultation, we submitted our revised draft Water Resource Management Plan 2024 to Welsh Government on the 23rd June 2023.
Our 2024 Water Resources Management Plan
Since submission of our revised draft WRMP24, we have worked closely with Welsh Government and our Regulators, primarily Ofwat and Natural Resources Wales, to further refine our WRMP24, ensuring it aligns fully with their expectations. On the 15th October 2024 we received formal confirmation from Welsh Government that the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs has granted us permission to publish our Final Water Resource Management Plan 2024, as amended.
In summary, we have undertaken a thorough and detailed analysis of the potential risks to our water supply systems in terms of the availability of water resources to meet demand over the next 25 years. This assessment has shown that for our South East Wales Conjunctive Use System (SEWCUS) and our Tywi Gower water resource zones there is a risk of not achieving target levels of water resource resilience. Our Final WRMP24 therefore delivers a robust twin track approach consisting of:
- Continuation of our ‘find and fix’ leakage programme to maintain and improve performance over time using new technology.
- A progressive customer metering programme delivered over the AMP8 and AMP9 periods. This will support achievement of our long-term targets by 2050 of a 50% reduction in leakage levels (against 2017/18 levels), and to reduce our domestic customers per capita consumption to 110 l/p/d by 2050.
- Four network improvement schemes, two in the Tywi Gower and two in the SEWCUS water resource zones.
- Commitment to undertake joint investigations with NRW in AMP8, to assess the future sustainability of our abstraction licences under a changing climate and to look further into Nature Based Solutions.
The outcome is that we will meet increased drought resilience targets for all our water resource through delivery of a programme of measures which secures water supplies. We have tested our Plan to ensure that it is robust against various plausible future scenarios.
The following are the key documents that form our Final Water Resource Management Plan.