Water UK

Planning for growth and water resources (briefing)

13/04/06

Sustainable water resources management depends on managing demand but also developing new resources where they are needed. It is natural and right that there should be a full debate about the relationship between the two sides of the ‘twin-track’ approach to maintaining a secure public supply.

Fortunately the mechanisms exist in the water industry price review process for full exploration of proposed investment in new supply capacity. All stakeholders have the opportunity to contribute to decisions and from 2007 the companies’ 25-year water resource plans will be subject to formal public consultation in accordance with Water Act 2003. Water UK supports this move to increase awareness and debate about a matter of growing public interest.

Water UK believes that the sustainability of water resources is well-served by the current requirement on companies to prepare these long-term resource plans and complementary drought plans. In these matters the UK regime is the equal of any in the world.

It is essential that in the years ahead companies are able to invest at the levels needed in a range of development options:

 •  Increased storage – new reservoirs, additional capacity in existing reservoirs

 •  Increased natural storage – restoring or creating wetlands, planned flooding

 •  Desalination – constantly improving technology, especially to meet peak demands

 •  Better connections within catchments – more flexibility to share between water supply zones.

Coordinating land use and water planning

It is not sustainable to separate decisions about land use from decisions about water resources and public supply. This has been increasingly recognised in recent years in:

 •  wider appreciation of the cost of water pollution from farms, industry and transport;

 •  creation of the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which brought agriculture and water under the same roof; and

 •  the debate over proposals by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for an additional 200,000 new houses beyond existing South-East development plans.

Water UK does not agree with those who oppose housing expansion in the South-East on the grounds that it will provoke a ‘water crisis’. Water shortage need not hold up economic development as long as development and water resource plans are made side by side. By assessing costs and benefits and working within environmental limits it will be possible to provide sustainable solutions.

Ends

For more information please contact:

Barrie Clarke, Director of Communication
020 7344 1804 or
Bruce Horton, Policy Adviser
020 7344 1817