The impacts of these challenges are alarming, as over a third of our water supplies will be lost by 2050. Without long-term planning and action, there will simply not be enough water to supply our customers in the future, despite our leadership in leakage reduction, efficient use of water by our customers facilitated by metering and our investment in resilience.

That’s why we never stop looking for ways to futureproof our region for generations to come. A key part of planning ahead for the future is our Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP), which we produce every five years. It sets out how we will manage the water supplies in our region to meet current and future needs, looking ahead 25 years or more, in order to mitigate challenges such as:
 

Climate change

We have an excellent track record of investing in resilience. This meant we were able to avoid a hosepipe ban in this region despite the record temperatures and drought in summer 2022. However, we are experiencing hotter, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters. Drought is expected to become more common. Ultimately, the changing climate impacts the groundwaters and river catchments we use to supply drinking water, and reduces the amount of water we have available for customer taps.

Need to protect the environment

Reducing the amount of water we take from rivers and water sources is one of the biggest actions we can take to protect the environment. We are working with the Environment Agency to cap our abstraction licences in the short-term, as well as drive longer-term environmental improvements including through the Water Industry National Environment Programme.

We believe that taking less water from the environment is the right thing to do; h. However, it means we must find alternative ways to keep taps flowing. This is becoming increasingly difficult as there are limited opportunities for us to increase output from our existing water sources or optimise our water network further. Instead, we need to develop significant infrastructure such as new raw water storage reservoirs and water reuse, both of which have long delivery timescales.  

Population growth

The East of England experienced the highest growth rates in the United Kingdom in the 10 years to the 2021 census. We expect this to continue with an additional 911,000 people predicted to live in our region by 2050.  

A step-change in demand management - we have a strong track record for  managing the impact of growth. We put about the same amount of water into supply now as we did back in 1989, despite a 30% population increase in that time. However, opportunities for reducing water usage and leakage are becoming increasingly limited, as we have invested heavily in leakage reduction and metering since privatisation remaining at the forefront of the industry in this field.  Building on our leadership in these areas, we have invested significantly in smart metering and smart networks, allowing us to understand consumption like never before, which we will use to develop more innovative methods to drive the next step change in reducing demand.