Ofwat is seeking clarification on aspects of WRSE’s proposed resilience framework as part of WRSE’s work to progress a regional water resources plan for the south east.

Commenting in the water sector regulator’s response to WRSE’s recent consultation on the framework, Colin Green Director – Future Assets and Resources at Ofwat, said that more detail is needed to understand how this will be delivered in practice.

The letter itself is confined largely to setting out the outcomes that Ofwat expects the regional water resources plans to deliver, together with general high-level comment on areas for improvement, without providing more detailed and specific examples. A separate Annex outlines more detailed comments on key areas of the framework.

A significant proportion of the letter is focussed on Ofwat’s expectations for the regional and water company plans need to address the key themes and issues outlined in its information note published in June 2018.

Ofwat’s expected outcomes for regional water resources plans are that they will:

• Identify and evidence the promotion of efficient, deliverable, multi-sector and ambitious programmes that deliver for both customers and the environment from a regional perspective.
• Transparently present the decision-making process followed including the assumptions made, and fully identify issues regarding programme affordability, inter-generational concerns and distributional impacts.
• Frame the resilience investment proposed in the context of the key regional (and company) system vulnerabilities demonstrating how the planning approaches and interventions are proportional to these risks.

Colin Black comments:

“We expect companies across all regions to seize the opportunity of regional and national solutions to address future challenges.”

“We recognise that more work is needed to ensure that long term planning delivers the regional outcomes outlined in the Environment Agency’s National Framework for water resources as well as the local needs of customers and other stakeholders. We look forward to further engaging with you in the coming months on these matters.”

The letter says that there is a long history of the UK Government and Ofwat promoting regional level thinking in water resources planning, pointing out that Ofwat had “significant concerns with the progress shown in WRMP19 and PR19.” Ofwat allowed additional funding within the PR19 final determination for the investigation and development of strategic regional water resource solutions.

The regulator’s expectation is that the regional resilience framework will “support the development of a co-created plan that delivers optimised regional outcomes for the benefit of customers, the environment and wider society.”

Referring to collaboration and co-creation, the letter emphasises the need to ensure that customers and other stakeholders “are engaged effectively to shape and co-create the resilience plan from the very start.”

Ofwat also expects regional planning to take a backward, as well as a forward look at planning approaches. The letter says the complexity of the approach to planning must be appropriate and well explained with clear justification for the adoption of more complex approaches and be “ideally linked to weaknesses identified in the previous round of planning.”

On programme selection and comparability, Ofwat says that further detail on how the stages interact would assist understanding of the framework – “in particular how the least cost, best value, resilience shift plans are influenced by their predecessors.”

Click here to read the letter and Annex in full