News

We have launched our latest Water Resources Management Plan and are asking for customers to send in their views.

Every five years water companies have to produce and publish a Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP).  The plan should demonstrate that the company has long term plans in place to deal with the impacts of population growth, drought, environmental obligations and climate change uncertainty in order to balance the supply and demand of water.

Marcus O’Kane, water resources manager, explains: “Our Water Resources Management Plan sets out our plans to make sure that we have reliable and sustainable water supplies for all of our current and future customers.  Severn Trent customers have not had a hosepipe ban since the severe drought of 1995-96, and our latest WRMP explains how we plan to maintain that proud record.

“Our WRMP consists of several elements, including 25 year forecasts of how much water we think our customers will need in the future, considering factors such as climate change and
population, and how much water is available for use now and how this may change in the future.  The plan also includes our options for how to meet demand, including leakage reduction and sustainable abstraction.  The population of our region is likely grow by around 1.13 million people over the next 25 years and we need to make sure we have sufficient water supplies to meet their demands.”

Some of the things we are proposing in order to reduce the amount of water needed include reducing leakage to record low levels never achieved before, helping customers to use less water through water efficiency activities and education, and increasing the coverage of water meters across the network to further reduce consumption and to improve understanding of water demand patterns.

We're also proposing to reduce abstraction from those water sources that could in the future harm the environment, use river restoration techniques to improve habitats and ecology in the rivers across our region, to work with landowners to protect our sources of drinking water supply from pollution risks and explore new water trading opportunities in and out of the region to make best use of national resources.

Marcus continues:  “The plan we’re launching is just a draft at this stage, and we’d really like to hear the views from our customers and stakeholders on our proposals.  In particular, we’d welcome thoughts on our assessment of future risks to water resource availability and our proposals for making sure we have sufficient supplies to meet future demand for water.”

The consultation period will end on 14 May 2018, after which we will consider any responses and will update the plan accordingly.  You can find the plan on our website - https://www.severntrent.com/about-us/future-plans/water-resource-management/water-resource-managment-plan/.