Sustainability
Managing our water sources and supply
One of our core functions is to ensure that sufficient, resilient water supplies are available now and over the long term for our customers.
Our customers expect water to be there when they need it, and it’s important to them that they can trust a clean, healthy supply of water that will always be there when they turn on the tap.
Water management is the whole end to end process. That means ensuring abstraction is sustainable, investing in our network and maintaining it, managing our own water use and enabling and encouraging customers to manage theirs.
of water supply and demand forecasted
free household efficiency audits carried out in 2020/21
leakage reduction target 2020-2025
of customers to have a water meter by 2030
Water resource management plans
Our statutory Water Resource Management Plans detail how we will manage supply and demand to adapt to the impact of climate change and meet our environmental obligations over the next 25 years, in both Severn Trent and Hafren Dyfrdwy.
We produce and publish a Water Resource Management Plan every five years, and conduct an annual review. We published our latest Water Resources Management Plan in August 2019.
Our Water Resource Management Plan consists of several elements.
Forecasting demand
Firstly, we make a 25 year demand forecast. This describes how much water we think our customers will need in the future, considering factors such as climate change and population.
Forecasting supply
We then make a 25 year supply forecast. This illustrates how much water is available for use now, and how this may change in the future. We consider the impact of climate change and potential reductions in the volume of water we can take from rivers and groundwater.
Assessing the options
We also include an assessment of our options to balance supply and demand, including leakage reduction and sustainable abstraction.
We balance supply and demand for the best possible outcome for the environment and customers.
Climate projection modelling
Our Water Resource Management Plan takes into account the potential long term impacts, and the significant uncertainties around those impacts, of climate change on our water resources.
We use the UK Climate Projection 2009 datasets and combine them with our own water resource modelling capability to produce a range of plausible, climate-impacted future scenarios.
We have tested the impact of the full range of those scenarios on our investment decision making, and have produced a plan that takes a proportionate approach to mitigating for this future uncertainty. We are now assessing the impact of the UK Climate Projection 2018 scenarios.
Our long term water management strategy
Our long term strategy consists of two main elements.
Firstly, we’ll use demand management measures to reduce the amount of water we need to put into supply. To achieve this we will:
- Reduce leakage on our network
- Help customers to use less water through water efficiency activities and education
- Increase the coverage of water meters across our network to further reduce consumption and to improve our understanding of water demand patterns.
Secondly, we’ll make the best use of our sustainable sources of supply. To do this we will:
- Reduce abstraction from those water sources that may have a detrimental impact on the environment
- Make sure our future water abstractions do not pose a risk of environmental deterioration, as required by the Water Framework Directive
- Increase the flexibility and resilience of our supply system
- Increase or optimise deployable output from existing, sustainable sources where possible
- Use catchment restoration techniques to improve habitats and ecological resilience to low flows
- Use catchment management measures to protect our sources of drinking water supply from pollution risks
- Explore trades in and out of our region to optimise national use of resources
Supply options
Our Water Resource Management Plan and our Price Review 2019 investment plan include 22 supply scheme options which involve making better use of existing sustainable sources of supply and enhancing our ability to deploy the water.
These are needed to meet the environmental challenges in reducing unsustainable abstraction and mitigating future environmental deterioration. We have 9 options for development and deployment in Asset Management Period 7, which covers the five years from 2020 to 2025.
Stakeholder engagement
We worked with a wide range of stakeholders throughout the production of the Water Resource Management Plan.
Through stakeholder forums, formal consultations, customer engagement workshops and one-to-one meetings, feedback from stakeholders have helped to shape our view of options for our plan.
Clear messages that we addressed in our final plan include; more ambitious leakage targets and demand management thinking and continue to deliver on our environmental commitments.
Regional water planning and water trading
We have a wider responsibility to ensure that future resources are planned and delivered most efficiently within our wider region and within England.
We have played an active role in helping to meet these objectives by collaborating with other water companies to develop water trades. We’ve worked with Thames Water and United Utilities on the Severn to Thames Transfer and with Affinity Water on the Grand Union Canal transfer scheme.
We are also actively developing regional multisector water resource planning within England. We’ve partnered with stakeholders from across the region and have become core members of the Water Resources West and Water Resources East.
Drought planning
We describe how we manage our resources and supply system in dry years to maintain our service to customers in our Drought Plan.
Our drought assessment concludes that through the actions we have taken in the past, our raw water supplies are already resilient to a one in 200 year drought event. We update our plan every five years.
Restoring sustainable abstraction
Some of our existing water abstractions may be having a detrimental effect on the environment, particularly during dry weather periods when river flows are low.
Throughout 2015 to 2020, we investigated the impact of abstractions that the Environment Agency identified as possibly harmful to the environment.
We’re gathering evidence of any damage to find out whether our activities are the main cause or just a contributor to any problem.
Agreed solutions
Where investigations conclude our activities are having an adverse impact, our Water Resource Management Plan includes the solutions we have agreed with Environment Agency to remove or mitigate these effects.
These solutions are either local or strategic. Local solutions can include changes to our compensation flows at surface water sites, or environmental improvement measures such as river habitat restoration.
Strategic, new supply-side solutions allow us to reduce abstraction from a number of our unsustainable groundwater sources.
How we’ll reduce unsustainable abstraction
Where we need to reduce unsustainable abstraction, we’ve agreed with the Environment Agency that we’ll make changes by the end of 2025.
However, in some cases changes will not take effect immediately. This allows us time to make changes to our network and make sure customers’ supply is not affected.
To mitigate the effects of ongoing abstraction, we’ll implement local schemes to improve habitats around the watercourses we pump from, between 2020 and 2025.
If a low flow investigation identifies changes needed to abstraction in a Site of Special Scientific Interest, we will prioritise that work and complete it by 2025.
All licence reductions and our required interventions will be completed by 2030.
Leakage
Tackling leakage is one of our top priorities. We’re already driving down our leakage figures and we’ve committed to reduce leakage by 15% by 2025.
We’ll prioritise leakage in the areas of greatest demand in Asset Management Period 7 - from 2020 to 2025 – and expand this to all areas from Asset Management Period 8 and beyond.
Our goal is to reduce leakage by 50% by 2045. We plan to achieve this through developing and deploying leakage detection and prevention technology, improving measurement and data capture, and innovation.
World water innovation fund
In April 2019 we joined forces with water companies from across the globe to create the World Water Innovation Fund - an ambitious multi-million scheme
set up to protect the future of water for everyone.
The World Water Innovation Fund will see likeminded water companies share their knowledge through never-seen-before trials, research, disruptive thinking and ground-breaking technology.
Water efficiency
We have an ambitious water efficiency programme that has saved around 25 million litres per day (Ml/d) of water between 2015 and 2020 through water efficiency advice for customers, free and subsidised water-saving products on request, and targeted home water efficiency checks.
Save Water Save Money
We’re working in partnership with Save Water Save Money to offer our customers various water-saving devices, which help them save water and save money by reducing their water bill.
The products are free, or offered at a reduced price. We generate no income from these products.
Water efficiency home check
In Asset Management Period 6 we launched our water efficiency home check programme.
This started in the area around Rugby, Warwickshire and then expanded to Coventry and Nottingham.
Customers in the area can sign up for a free home check, where we will visit their home and fit free water saving devices, offer advice on how they can save water and check for simple leaks.
This free service helps customers save water, energy and money.
Our target over AMP7 is to deliver 35,000 home audits every year, helping our customers to make the best use of water efficiency devices in their homes. In 2019/20, we completed over 23,000 home audits, allowing customers to save on average 10% on their daily water use. We have also gained better insights into the causes of leaks on customers’ private supply pipes and fixtures.
In 2020/21, the home efficiency programme has been impacted by lockdown restrictions. We carried out just under 12,000 virtual and physical home water efficiency checks.
Metering
We believe metering is essential in reducing water consumption. We aim to have 65% of households on a water meter by 2025, with full metering coverage by the end of Asset Management Period 9 in 2040.
We are unable to compulsory switch customers to a meter so, between 2020 and 2025, we will install meters proactively and offer customers the opportunity to switch after demonstrating to them what their measured bill would be.
We expect this to give us a 10 Megalitre per day saving in Asset Management Period 7. Increased metering will make it easier to detect leaks, and give improvements in leak detection and repair, helping achieve our leakage reduction target.
Education and behaviour change
We offer free education about the benefits of using water wisely to promote water efficiency to our customers.
In 2020/21 we secured 40,728 commitments in the education programme.
As it becomes more common for water efficient devices to be installed in homes, our education and behavioural change activities will become increasingly important in helping to further reduce demand.
| Water management data | 2020/21 | 2019/20 |
2018/19 |
2017/18 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leakage (megalitres per day) | 414.6 | 401 | 419.5 | 443 |
| Meters installed | 83,274 | 32,262 | 38,543 | 32,484 |
