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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.

In July Water UK began quarterly reporting of water company performance against regulatory and industry targets in relation to services provided to developers. The aim of this work is to drive up companies’ performance in the provision of these services. This quantitative approach is likely to be complemented in the near future with customer satisfaction measuring.

A website is up and running for landlords to provide voluntarily basic contact information about their tenants so water companies can register them for billing and tackle this major source of water debt.

The extraction of shale gas poses potential risks to groundwater reserves, for example through contamination with chemicals used in the fracking process. However, the Infrastructure Act, passed last month, will help mitigate these risks. It states that water companies will need to be consulted for all planning applications involving the boring for, or getting of, oil and natural gas from shale.

The UK bathing season starts this month and runs until the end of September. For 2014, monitoring data will be assessed using the standards set in the current bathing water directive. This is the last season these standards will be used. From 2015, bathing water quality will be assessed using new, stricter standards.

Households in the UK could lose an average of nearly £1000 each under Labour’s nationalisation plans, according to a new study by economic consultants NERA.