A steady stream of pressure on water companies across England and Wales from the Consumer Council for Water has resulted in positive signs that customers are beginning to benefit more from annual water companies' profits.

The Environment Agency has launched its second round of river basin planning consultations

The draft Climate Change Bill shows the Government is learning some lessons from the failure to meet its 2010 carbon dioxide reduction targets, the Environmental Audit Select Committee concludes in its Seventh Report - but also comments that that the Government's policy towards the UK's 2050 target is clearly incoherent.

Water companies in England and Wales reduced the amount of water lost to leakage by nearly 160 million litres of water (Ml/d) a day. This is equal to the daily needs of around one million domestic consumers.

Water companies in England and Wales still have much work ahead of them – despite improving performance and pumping over £4.3 billion into maintaining existing assets and investing in new facilities in 2006-2007, according to Ofwat.

Jonathan Hodgkin, Director of Network Regulation at Ofwat, has written to all the water companies with proposals for water efficiency targets for each company for the remainder of AMP4.

Aquavitae, one of the companies trying to break into the water supply market, has complained to the Office of Fair Trading about the price Anglian Water wants to charge for access to its supply network, claiming that Anglian's prices would squeeze its margins and make it impossible for Aquavitae to make a profit.

A report published today by the Drinking Water Quality Regulator (DWQR) confirms the overall quality of drinking water in Scotland has continued to improve. The regulator confirms that the “overall quality of the public supply in Scotland is now very high.”

Ofwat has written to the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) in response to its current consultation on planning for a sustainable future.

Ofwat has today published the supporting document it has been asked to prepare by Defra as leader of the water sector group to evaluate the implications of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) for the water industry in England and Wales.