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There is not long left before more than 1.2 million small businesses, charities and public sector bodies in England will be free to choose their water and wastewater supplier.

The Environment Secretary, Andrea Leadsom, has announced plans to ban microbeads in cosmetic and cleaning products in the UK by 2017. This follows a report by the Environmental Audit Committee highlighting the damaging impact they can have on the marine environment.

The water industry has demonstrated its commitment to supporting the delivery of new homes in the UK by maintaining its high standards of service to developers.

The water industry is helping to speed up the building of new homes by meeting its recently introduced standards for providing a range of services to developers over 95% of the time.

Customers' number one priority for the water industry is safe, reliable supplies of water at a price they can afford. To deliver this, it's critically important that the water industry plans for the long term, because decisions and investments made today will determine the level of service that the industry can provide well into the future.

The second quarterly report of developer service standards shows water companies have improved on their overall levels of delivery and performance. The second quarterly figures for water supply have risen from 89% to 93% in response to 125,000 developer requests. For sewerage they are up from 94% to 97% - in response to 9,000 developer requests.

From this month, nearly all water companies will have tariffs in place to help customers who are struggling to pay, to reduce their bills.

Applications will be opening in April for new apprentices to join South East Water’s successful two-year apprenticeship programme.

The water industry is fully committed to the training and career development of apprentices as part of its work to deliver its commitments to its customers and the environment, now and for the future.

The water industry has invested more than £116 billion since privatisation. This investment has underpinned the improvements to drinking water quality, made our rivers and beaches much cleaner and also secured regional growth and jobs. Water UK is holding its annual City Conference in March for investors, analysts, ratings agencies, City institutions regulators and government bodies, to discuss future finance and investment in the water sector.

It might seem difficult to believe, as the weather forecasts warn of yet more rain, but it was only two years ago that parts of Britain were starting to recover from two years of extremely low rainfall. Dry, cold, wet, hot – the meteorological rollercoaster ride of the past three or four years has been exceptional.