Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of the water industry regulatory framework in providing flexibility to enable water and wastewater companies to respond to major new housing growth, including the proposed Tempsford new town.

Defra’s Water Delivery Taskforce is working to bring together Government, regulators and water companies to ensure sufficient water and wastewater capacity is delivered to accommodate the government’s growth ambitions, including for new homes.

Water companies have a statutory duty to provide a secure supply of water for customers and set out how they plan to continue to do so through statutory Water Resources Management Plans (WRMPs). Water companies consult on revised WRMPs every five years, which inform Ofwat’s price review decisions.

The water companies must also maintain their WRMPs and are required to review the plans annually to take account of changes. This includes changes to demand forecasts as a result of housing growth that cannot be accommodated in existing WRMPs. This year, we strengthened and clarified this change process with water companies, issuing guidance to companies on how we will engage and assess any change needed to accommodate growth.

The WRMP process works closely alongside Ofwat’s price review cost change process, which allows companies to access additional funding for investment to support the growth, including investment such as sewage treatment works: PR24-Cost-change-process-–-Demand-growth-investment-additional-guidance.pdf.