About us
Serving our wonderful customers and communities
Our purpose is to serve our customers and communities. This drove our vision to be the most trusted water company by 2020 and every year thereafter.
But trust has to be earned - it is given, not taken, and it has to be given by our customers.
Today, we all expect the companies that serve us to be a positive influence in our lives, and to benefit the society we live in.
Being 'almost good enough' is, frankly, just not good enough - and we'll only give our custom to the brands we trust.
While our customers don't have a choice about who provides their water - so they can't vote with their feet - our customers quite rightly have the same high expectations of water companies as they would of any other brand or company.
We know we are uniquely privileged to have been gifted with such a great group of customers and we don't ever want to take that for granted.
That's why we see the next five years as a critical opportunity to make commitments to improving in areas our customers want us to and become a role model for private companies delivering a wonderful public service.
Putting our wonderful customers right at the centre of our plans
We place our customers at the heart of what we do.
Severn Trent
Severn Trent’s business plan for 2020 to 2025 was fast-tracked
by Ofwat in their final determination.
Ofwat's final determinations and how we're carrying out our plans
Ofwat made their final decisons on our plans for Severn Trent and Hafren Dyfrdwy in 2019. You can check Ofwat's final determinations and related documents on the Ofwat website.
You can read the key documents about how we will carry out our plans in the Severn Trent Regulatory Library, and in Hafren Dyfrdwy's Regulatory Library.
Investor summaries
If you're an investor and you'd like to know more about our plans in details, you can download and view the investor summary of the PR19 business plan, and the investor summary about Ofwat's decision to fast-track our Severn Trent business plan.
Expert Challenge Panel
Providing challenge to Severn Trent Water
The purpose of the ECP is to challenge and promote fresh thinking as Severn Trent develops its long-term delivery strategy and draft business plan in the areas of:
- customer research;
- strategic investments ;
- bespoke performance commitments (“PCs”) (i.e. PCs that are not common to all companies but bespoke to Severn Trent or a small number of companies); and
- affordability.
These are the areas where our customers and stakeholders can influence the contents of Severn Trent’s PR24 business plan.
Our ECP members
We have three other members who attend when there are points on the agenda of particular interest to their organisations:
- Ian Butterfield (Natural England),
- Claire Bunter (Environment Agency)
- Nicholas Adjei (Drinking Water Inspectorate).
Dates of the ECP meetings
Meeting No. | Date | ||
1 | Tuesday 24 May 2023 | ||
2 | Tuesday 19 July 2022 | ||
3 | Thursday 1 September 2022 | ||
4 | Wednesday 2 November 2022 | ||
5 | Wednesday 4 January 2023 | ||
6 | Wednesday 1 March 2023 | ||
7 | Wednesday 3 May 2023 | ||
8 | Wednesday 5 July 2023 | ||
9 | Wednesday 6 September 2023 |
Water Resources Management Plan
Explaining our Water Resources Management Plan.
A statutory requirement
It is a statutory requirement that every five years water companies produce and publish a Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP).
The WRMP should demonstrate that we have long-term plans in place to accommodate the impacts of population growth, drought, our environmental obligations and climate change uncertainty in order to balance supply and demand.
It consists of several elements.
Demand Forecast
Supply Forecast
Options assessment
How the plan is made
Supply and demand forecasts are made for the next 25 years and beyond to help us determine whether we will have enough water to supply our customers.
Potential solutions are sought to increase the amount of water we will have available.
On our journey to the final plan we follow the statutory timetable set out by Defra and the Environment Agency, we hold regular consultations with our
customers and stakeholders to identify potential solutions, and we consider the environmental impacts alongside affordability.
Consider environmental impacts
Statutory timetable for WRMP
Consider affordability for customers
Consult with stakeholders
Future challenges
Our Water Resources Management Plan must demonstrate
- Resilience to a range of risks – e.g. drought, loss of supplies.
- Flexibility and adaptability – the plan must be robust to changes to supply and demand forecasts in the future.
- Approach to climate change – drier summers and wetter winters make it harder to meet peak demand.
- Sustainable abstraction options – which don’t deplete our natural resources or have a negative effect on biodiversity and our local river environment.
- Planned proactive work – proactive maintenance of our network to reduce amount of water wasted by leakage and optimise the use of our sources.
draft Water Resource Management Plan 2024
We published the draft version of our next Water Resources Management Plan (dWRMP24) on 16 November 2022. This latest plan looks ahead to what we plan to do between 2025 and 2085.
We're now in a 14 week consultation period, which will end on 22 February 2023 and we'd love to hear your views. All comments and queries must be done using the official route via DEFRA (see below).
We’ll then review each of the comments and, where appropriate, we’ll use the feedback to update and improve our plan.
We aim to publish the final plan, subject to approval, in the Autumn of 2023.
Please send your response before 22 February 2023 by emailing: water.resources@defra.gov.uk, copying in future.consultation@severntrent.co.uk, including the following in the subject box: Severn Trent Water dWRMP Consultation Response.
If you wish to provide feedback by post, the address is:
Water Resources Management Plan Consultation
Defra
Water Resources
Seacole, 2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DF
dWRMP24 DRAFT documents
View or download the PDF documents relating to our Water Resource Management Plan.
dWRMP24 DRAFT Data tables
Data tables detailing an area’s water resource planning information. You can download these data tables as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.
Water Resource Management Plan 2019
Market information
We provide Water Resources Market information to enable third parties to identify where we may need additional water resources and to test how their proposals compare to our own supply options.
This map shows where our fifteen water resource zones (WRZ) are located.
You can download a spreadsheet containing key market information and data on our water resources position for each zone, and a Shapefile that can be used in Geographic Information Systems to depict our water resource zone boundaries.
Water resource marketing information
Water resource zones | Market information tables | WRZ maps |
Bishops Castle |
Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
Chester | Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
Forest and Stroud | Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
Kinsall | Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
Mardy | Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
Newark | Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
North Staffs |
Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
Nottinghamshire | Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
Rutland | Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
Ruyton | Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
Shelton | Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
Staffordshire | Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
Strategic Grid | Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
Whitchurch and Wem | Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
Wolverhampton | Excel spreadsheet | Shapefile |
If you would like clarification of any of the information contained in the spreadsheets, please get in touch with the team by emailing futureconsultation@severntrent.co.uk or check our trading and procurement code.
Bid assessment framework
The purpose of this Bid Assessment Framework is to support the market for water resources, demand management and leakage services.
It provides guidance and a template to enable you to submit proposals to help us maintain our water supply balance.
This process is designed to ensure transparency and fairness throughout the tendering process and builds on existing processes and our obligations for water resource planning, procurement law and competition obligations.
The BAF was introduced to encourage competitive bidding market for water resources, demand management and leakage so that we will adopt the best value options regardless of their origin.
This way we will ensure our customers have the lowest possible bills.
We’re happy to receive proposals from all organisations.
All these proposals will be subject to a straightforward and transparent pre-qualification evaluation.
We run an annual cycle to generate bids but we are more than happy to accept ad-hoc or speculative submissions at any time.
You can download a guide to the Bid Assessment Framework and the process to help you in your tender.
You can also download an excel spreadsheet containing the relevant application forms.
We will ensure confidentiality in two ways.
- We are happy to enter into a non-disclosure agreement.
- We have a separate team that will assess your proposal. Those developing water resource schemes, demand management and leakage services will not have access to your ideas or intellectual property.
Get in touch with us if you have any questions or feedback
If you have queries on any part of the process, or want to discuss technical aspects of your proposal, please get in touch by emailing our team at BAFProcurement@severntrent.co.uk.
Drought plan
Droughts are naturally occurring events that occur when there is below average rainfall for prolonged periods of time. We need plans to manage our system when droughts happen.
Maintaining our service
The Water Act (2003) made it a statutory requirement for water companies to produce and maintain a Drought Plan every five years. Our Drought Plan sets out how we will manage our resources and supply system during dry and drought years, whilst balancing the interests of customers, the environment and the wider economy. The Drought Plan Directions 2020 required water undertakers to submit a draft drought plan to Defra by the 1st of April 2021.
We submitted our new Draft Drought Plan in March 2021, formally consulted on the draft plan, produced a Statement of Response and a revised plan.
We have finalised our Drought Plan 2022-2027 which can be found below.
On the grounds of national security, in the Drought Plan we have omitted the names and locations of certain critical national infrastructure.
Defra gave us permission to publicly consult on this draft plan on 10 May 2021.
We also undertook a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), a Water Framework Directive assessment and a Habitats Regulation Assessment (HRA) of our draft 2022 to 2027 Drought Plan to take environmental impacts into account.
We consulted on our draft SEA between 1st February 2021 and 8th March 2021.
To request copies of our current Water Framework Directive and Habitats Regulation Assessment reports, contact the team by emailing futureconsultation@severntrent.co.uk
If you would like to read a paper version of our 2022-2027 Drought Plan, you may do so at our main Coventry Office by enquiring at reception.
Our address is:
Severn Trent Centre
2 St. John’s Street
Coventry
CV1 2LZ
Green Recovery
We are delighted to share with you our first dedicated Green Recovery report which provides an update on our progress to enhance our regions environment and better serve our customers and communities.
Life beyond the pandemic
In July 2020, the government along with our regulators penned a letter to water companies inviting the water sector to play their part in the country’s Green Recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. As a socially purposeful company, we were keen to get involved and recognised the role we can play in helping to meet the economic and social challenges that our country faces – so we started talking to our customers and got working on plans right away.
In July this year, Ofwat published their final determination which included £566m for Severn Trent, enabling us to deliver long-term, sustainable benefits for current and future generations in our region. This includes improving the environment, creating over 2,500 jobs, enhancing our regions skills and ultimately, saving our customers money in the long term. The Green Recovery will enable Severn Trent to lead the way in a number of projects, many of which will be a first for the UK.
Our Projects will tackle long-term issues that we know are important to our customers. The Green Recovery projects will:
- Increase water supplies with enough water to supply a city the size of Derby, using low carbon technology;
- Encourage wild swimming by trialling the creation of two bathing rivers in stretches of the River Leam and the River Teme;
- Accelerate environmental commitments by improving 500 kilometres of river five years earlier than planned; allowing communities and wildlife to benefit sooner;
- Create a scale trial using a nature-based approach to reduce the risk of flooding whilst creating a green environment which will significantly benefit the town of Mansfield;
- Help customers to save water by introducing over 150,000 smart meters; and
- Remove old customer-owned lead pipes in up to 26,000 homes in two trial areas and using innovative techniques to find and replace them.
Green recovery proposals
- Life Beyond the Pandemic - A Briefing for Customers and Other Stakeholders
- A guide to our submission
- Summary - Creating bathing rivers
- Summary - Decarbonising Water Resources
- Summary - Building sustainable flood-resilient communities
- Summary - Taking care of customers supply pipes
Business case documents
- Business case 01 - Creating bathing rivers
- Business case 02 - Decarbonising Water Resources
- Business case 03 - Building sustainable flood-resilient communities
- Business case 04 - Taking care of customers supply pipes
- Business case 05 - Accelerating environmental improvements
- Business case 06 - Smart metering
Annex documents
- Annex 01 - On track performance
- Annex 02 - Data tables [REDACTED]
- Annex 03 - Customer engagement
- Annex 04 - Affordability and financeability
- Annex 05 - Creating jobs and improving skills
- Annex 06 - Net zero carbon
- Annex 07 - Green recovery for well being
- Annex 08 - Stakeholders and third party funding
- Annex 09 - Cost robustness and efficiency
- Annex 10 - Deliverability of the green recovery
Water Resources - Strategic Resource Options (SROs)
Climate change and population growth is putting increasing pressure on the UK’s water resources. In less than 25 years a lack of water could limit growth, jobs and impact people’s everyday lives.
Water companies are developing plans to meet this challenge, such as reducing demand and tackling leakage, as well as developing new sources of water. At the same time, we need to make sure we protect the nature and wildlife that rely on the water systems which are the source of all our supplies.
Every 5 years we produce a Water Resources Management Plan, which you can see here. That sets out how we’re going to supply our customers with the 2.4billion litres of water needed every day.
But no one water company can solve this on their own – we need to work together to make sure there is enough water in the future for all our customers, businesses and to protect the natural environment.
As well as this, we’re working with various other water companies on a range of options – called Strategic Resource Options (SROs). These options are in the very early stages and right now we’re concentrating on what’s possible and how we could deliver projects to help make sure everyone has enough water in the future.
RAPID
To support the progression of strategic options, the Regulatory Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Development (RAPID) has been established by Ofwat to help accelerate the development of new water infrastructure. It seeks to improve regulation and remove barriers to help the water sector respond to long-term water resources challenges. RAPID is comprised of representatives from Ofwat, the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate. These are all our key regulators who make sure we do the right thing for our customers and the environment.
Development funding is available to us and the other water companies who are progressing strategic solutions through RAPID.
Options
Severn Trent is working on the following options.
- Severn to Thames Transfer
We are working with United Utilities and Thames Water looking at the possibility of moving water from a number of sources in Wales, the North West and the Midlands to the South East of England by releasing water into the River Severn and then transferring it on to the River Thames.
- The Grand Union Canal
We’re working with Affinity Water and the Canal & River Trust looking at an option that uses the existing canal infrastructure to transfer treated wastewater from Minworth in the Midlands to Affinity Water in Hertfordshire and North West London.
- Minworth
A source of raw water to support either the Severn to Thames Transfer SRO, the Grand Union Canal SRO, or a combination of the two. We’re partnered in this SRO by Affinity Water
- Severn Trent Sources
Options for new or increased sources of raw water. This SRO will also support the Severn to Thames Transfer SRO
- Upper Derwent Valley Reservoir Expansion
Working with Yoirkshire Water, we're looking at ways of expanding the reservoir capacity
Gate 1 reports, decisions and queries
The first stage of the RAPID process for agreeing the SROs is called ‘Gate One’. At this stage, we must demonstrate each strategic solution’s progress and viability. This involves setting out plans for delivering the proposed solution, including early conceptual outline designs alongside strategies for engaging stakeholders, gaining planning permission and for procuring and operating the new infrastructure.
It's important to note that all our strategic solutions are in their early stages, with key details such as site selection and early concept designs still being progressed.
On this page you will find the Gate 1 reports that were submitted to RAPID in July and December 2021, the decisions made by RAPID and the queries that we answered on each plan as part of the process.
Gate 2 reports
The second stage of the RAPID process for agreeing SROs is called ‘Gate Two’. At this stage, we have continued to develop and demonstrate each strategic solution from ‘Gate One’ illustrating our progress and the viability of the scheme. This involves setting out our plans for delivering the proposed solution, including the continued development of our conceptual outline designs alongside strategies for continuously engaging with our stakeholders, gaining any necessary planning permissions and for procuring and operating the new infrastructure.
It is important to note that all our strategic solutions are still in the very early, second stages of feasibility, with key details such as site selection and concept design still being progressed.
On this page you will find our Gate 2 reports that were submitted to RAPID in November 2022.
Next Steps
RAPID has published its draft decisions on the first four of the SROs on the Ofwat website.
All of the Severn Trent sponsored schemes that were submitted in July 2021 have been recommended for continuation to Gate 2. This means that work will now continue to develop each of the options in more detail. The UDVRE scheme has not yet been assessed.
Work throughout 2020-2025 will look at appropriate regulatory, technical and environmental aspects of each of the options. If the results of these investigations are favourable it will allow them to be considered as an option in future regional and water company Water Resource Management Plans. If the scheme progresses, it could bring many benefits to the region, including investment in water infrastructure, improvements for nature and creating skilled jobs.
Our Gate 2 reports were submitted to RAPID in November 2022 and we will now wait for approval to move each scheme to Gate 3.
Drainage and Wastewater Management Plan
Welcome to the consultation on the draft publication of our first Draft Drainage and Wastewater Management Plan (DWMP). Our consultation runs for three months from Thursday 30th June to Friday 30th September 2022, with comments and feedback being used to inform the publication of our Final DWMP by 31st March 2023. After reading the documentation set out below, we would welcome your comments/feedback using our feedback form.
DWMP is a new requirement that every five years water and sewerage companies produce and publish a DWMP. These should set out long-term plans to accommodate future challenges associated with climate change, population growth, increases in rainfall run-off associated with paving over permeable areas, and our environmental destination.
This is a new national framework produced in September 2017 as a joint project between Water Companies, Welsh Government, Defra, OFWAT, Natural Resource Wales, the Environment Agency, Consumer Council for Water, ADEPT and Blueprint for Water. An overview document explaining the key elements of the framework is available on the Water UK website.
The DWMP framework is structured using three reporting levels. Level 1 is a Company level, Level 2 is aligned to river basin management areas (known as ‘Strategic Planning Areas’ in the framework), whilst Level 3 covers the extent of a catchment draining to a wastewater treatment works (known as a Tactical Planning Unit).
Below is a Customer Facing Summary which provides a quick to read overview summarising the key findings of our Draft DWMP. At a Level 1 Company reporting level we have also produced a Non-Technical Overview which provides more detail.
We recommend opening documents in a new tab, using right click, “open link in new tab”.
Structure of our DWMP
Below are a series of documents aligned to the requirements set out in the framework.
The hierarchy of documents is summarised in the diagram:
- Customer quick guide – this explains the aims of the DWMP and our long-term objectives. It provides an easy-to-read summary of what we are proposing to deliver in the short, medium and long term and explains how people can inform these plans.
- Non-technical overview (Level 1 plan) – this document, which is aimed at regulators, planners, other drainage or infrastructure providers or informed customers who wish to get an overview of the approach that we have followed and understand the findings. It also sign posts a series of technical summaries which then provide fuller details into each aspects of the process.
- Strategic Planning Area Assessment Level 2 catchment plans – detailed findings which can be explored for the 14 strategic catchments across our region.
- Tactical Planning Unit Summaries Level 3 WwTW plans – the detailed analysis behind the level 2 findings.
- Technical Summaries – a series of more technically focused documents which provide more insight into how we have undertaken our DWMP. These are signposted from the Level 1 non-technical overview.
- Supporting documents – these show the outputs of our Risk Based Catchment Screening (RBCS) and Baseline Risk and Vulnerability Assessments (BRAVA)
Getting to know your catchment
To help you understand the region we serve and the boundaries of our wastewater catchments, the map below will help you to navigate the different reporting levels which we have documented. If you click on a catchment the pop-up window will provide a link to the appropriate Level 2 Strategic Planning Area and Level 3 Tactical Planning Units documents. In addition to being able to zoom in/out there is also the functionality to enter a postcode to quickly find which catchment a property is served by (we recommend you open the web map in a new window using the link beneath).