Ofwat has issued more guidance on data that water companies will need to provide for the delivery plans they were asked to publish as part of the PR24 final determinations. The plans must set out how they will deliver their PR24 enhancement programme in relation to price control deliverables (PCDs) and interim milestones.

Introducing the guidance, Ofwat said at PR24 it is providing a step change increase in enhancement expenditure allowances of £44 billion - around four times the level of enhancement expenditure in PR19.

“To improve the accountability of companies and to encourage them to deliver the funded enhancements, we are increasing the transparency on what companies will deliver over the PR24 period and how they progress in their delivery over this same period,” the guidance states.

The further guidance sets out the data Ofwat is proposing to collect through delivery plans and provides term definitions of the data being requested in data tables published alongside the guidance.

It also identifies the commentary that companies need to provide alongside their delivery plan submissions.

Ofwat expects companies to submit their draft delivery plans by 12 May 2025 and to then submit their final delivery plans to Ofwat and publish them in their website on 15 July 2025.

The regulator is asking the companies to report on progress against PCD targets and interim milestones on a six-monthly basis in October/November and April/May of each year. They are also being asked to submit an independently assured report of their progress against their delivery plan in July each year, alongside their annual performance reporting.

The guidance explains:

“Given the delivery challenges companies are likely to face in PR24 we are developing a monitoring regime that allow us and stakeholders to track delivery of PR24. The combination of six-monthly reporting and interim milestone progress reporting will provide early warning signs of potential delivery issues. This will enable companies, Ofwat and other regulators to consider possible interventions in a timely manner. We acknowledge that this will bring additional administrative burden to companies and Ofwat. However, this additional burden is proportionate compared to the overall scale of investment, and is needed to protect customers and the environment from the risk of under-delivery or late delivery.”

The delivery plans are required to collect data on four key metrics:

• PCD outputs – the outputs Ofwat expect companies to deliver through enhancement expenditure related allowances, and the additional customer funded outputs from base expenditure. For example, these could be volume of storage for storm overflow schemes or mega litres of water available for use for water supply schemes. Ofwat is asking companies to report both outturn and forecast output delivery.
• Expenditure – the expenditure associated with the PCD output to be delivered, including both outturn and forecast expenditure.
• Interim milestones – the stage gates Ofwat expects schemes to go through before the final output is delivered. Ofwat is asking companies to report against these milestones in PCD areas where output delivery is likely to be back-loaded.
• RAG rating – a risk assessment for performance against the output requirements for each PCD which should take the form of a Red/Amber/Green rating.

Last month the regulator held a workshop with stakeholders to share its initial thinking on the delivery plan guidance. Ofwat commented:

“We are keen to continue to work with the sector to further develop our approach to monitoring delivery of PR24. This will be an iterative and evolving process.

“We are engaging with the Environment Agency, Natural England and Natural Resources Wales, to discuss how we join up in monitoring delivery of AMP8 and how delivery plans willfeed into the Delivery Monitoring Framework (DMF); annual Water Resource Management Plans (WRMP) and Drainage and Wastewater Management Plans (DWMP) review processes and vice versa.

“We will continue to work with the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales and Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) to make sure we maximise information synergies and minimise the duplication of information requested from companies.”

Click here to download Ofwat's March 2025 PR24 final determinations Delivery plan guidance