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.
The Water Forum is an independent, expert panel that challenges
Severn Trent to listen and respond better to customers.
We have provided constructive challenge to Severn Trent in the development of the 2020 to 2025 business plan.
We act in customers' best interests by challenging Severn Trent to consult their customers about important topics, from affordability to the environment, and gain their honest views. We then ensure their opinions and key customer issues are fully understood and reflected in Severn Trent's business plan.
Our role
An introduction to the Water Forum
Customers said... Severn Trent acted
In previous years, the Water Forum has encouraged dialogue between customers and Severn Trent, resulting in real progress.
Here are a few examples of what we helped Severn Trent achieve as they planned for 2015-20.
Big difference
Keeping it green
Quality stuff
Community spirit
Value for money
Experts with different perspectives
The Water Forum has an independent Chair. There are 11 other Forum members who have either a statutory remit, a key interest in the water industry, or provide specialist knowledge to support and challenge the delivery of Severn Trent's current plan, and the development of its next business plan (2020-25).
Gill Barr, Chair
"It's important that Severn Trent is challenged to make sure that it's customers get the best value they possibly can from their water
supplier."
Gill has chaired the Water Forum since January 2016.
She has an extensive background in retail and marketing, having previously held senior marketing roles at John Lewis, Mastercard and the Co-operative Group, and is an experienced non-executive director.
BILL DARBYSHIRE
Water Company Account Manager, Environment Agency
IAN BUTTERFIELD
Senior Freshwater Advisor, Natural England, East Midlands area
DR STUART YOUNG
Executive Director, East Midlands Councils
Download minutes from Water Forum meetings
The Water Forum is committed to being transparent and independent.
It usually meets quarterly to discuss important issues relating to the company's next business plan. You can download the minutes of the meetings here as they become available.
- Minutes of meeting - January 2015
- Minutes of meeting - Ocober 2015
- Minutes of meeting - March 2016
- Minutes of meeting - September 2016
- Minutes of meeting - November 2016
- Minutes of meeting - January 2017
- Minutes of meeting - October 2017
- Minutes of meeting - June 2017
- Minutes of meeting - July 2017
- Minutes of meeting - January 2018
- Minutes of meeting - March 2018
- Minutes of meeting - May 2018
- Minutes of meeting - June 2018
The Water Forum's terms of reference set out the group's purpose and vision. You can download the Water Forum's terms of reference in PDF format.
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.
A 25 year demand forecast
A 25 year supply forecast
An options assessment
How the plan is made
Supply and demand forecasts are made for the next 25 years 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.
Water Resource Management Plan 2019
We published our final Water Resources Management Plan in August 2019.
In February 2018 we published our draft WRMP for stakeholder consultation and we were pleased to receive comments from 22 different stakeholders.
We reviewed each of these comments and, where appropriate, we used the feedback to update and improve our plan.
In September 2018 we published a summary of the stakeholder feedback and we described the resulting changes to our plan.
We also confirmed that the changes we made did not materially alter the recommendations made in our draft WRMP, as laid out in our Statement of Response.
In July 2019 we received approval from the Secretary of State that we should publish our final Water Resources Management Plan.
Water Resources Management Plan documents
View or download the PDF documents relating to our Water Resource Management Plan.
Data tables
Data tables detailing an area’s water resource planning information. You can download these data tables as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.
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 Drought Plan Directions 2020 now require water undertakers to submit a draft drought plan to Defra by the 1st of April 2021. We submitted a revised Drought Plan in 2019 (2019-2024) following on from the hot/dry weather event to include our learnings. As directed by Defra, we will not be continuing this process.
We will be submitting a new Draft Drought Plan next year, and in accordance with the Drought Plan Regulations 2005 we will be pre-consulting stakeholders for this plan.
If you have any comments you would like to communicate to us for the Draft Drought Plan 2021, please forward them by email to futureconsultation@severntrent.co.uk by the 14th of August for consideration.
The Water Act (2003) made it a statutory requirement for water companies to produce and maintain a Drought Plan. We update these plans every five years.
Our Drought Plan sets out how we will manage our resources and supply system in dry years, to maintain our service to our customers.
Defra gave us permission to publicly consult on this draft plan on 16 May 2018.
We have published a non-technical summary of the plan and a Statement of Response to feedback from stakeholders.
We also undertook a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), a Water Framework Directive assessment and a Habitats Regulation Assessment (HRA) of our draft 2019 to 2024 Drought Plan to take environmental impacts into account.
In accordance with our new Draft Drought Plan due to be submitted by 1st April 2021, we will also be updating these environmental impact reports. The draft Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) 2021 is now available for consultation from the 1st of February 2021 until the 8th March 2021.
To submit feedback on our draft SEA 2021 or to request copies of our current Water Framework Directive and Habitats Regulation Assessment reports, contact the team by emailing futureconsultation@severntrent.co.uk.
Green Recovery
We want to share with you our Green Recovery initiatives which sets out our plans to enhance our regions environment and better serve our customers and communities.
Life beyond the pandemic
In July, 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.
Our package proposes initiatives worth over £730m of investment that will deliver long-term, sustainable benefits for current and future generations in our region. This includes improving the environment, creating over 3,000 jobs, enhancing our regions skills and ultimately, saving our customers money in the long term.
Our proposals tackle long-term issues that we know are important to our customers, such as developing net-zero carbon water resources, delivering a step-change improvement in river water quality, making our towns more resilient to flooding, and removing lead from customers’ supply pipes.
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