A new London Assembly report being published today sets out a range of measures to help London manage its limited water supplies more effectively and avoid drought restrictions in the future.

Water Matters by the Assembly’s Health and Environment Committee is warning that the capital cannot rely solely on its own rainfall. The report makes a number of recommendations to reduce the amount of water used by each Londoner – currently around 167 litres per day – and cut leakage.

The report says although this year’s restrictions came to an end after exceptionally heavy rain, uncertainties about future levels of rainfall, an increasing population( expected to grow from about 8 million now to 9 million or more by 2031) and the effects of climate change are placing more pressure on precious water supplies.Despite improvements by water companies, around a quarter of London’s treated drinking water is lost through leakage. The report warns leakage rates are not likely to improve significantly in the next few years as all four of London’s water companies are already meeting or doing better than the Ofwat targets set up to 2015.

The Assembly Committee is now calling for water industry regulator Ofwat to fully include long-term economic, social and environmental costs of supplying water when it reviews its methodology for calculating leakage targets. The Committee is seeking a response from the regulator to the report by the end of 2012 in which it "should indicate an in-principle response to this recommendation and give an indication of how it will be done."  

It also wants Ofwat , together with the water companies, to look at assessing the true value of water. Currently, the Greater London Authority (GLA) considers that ‘there is no agreed, transparent mechanism for comparing supply and demand measures that fully captures the social and environmental consequences.’

In the Committee’s view, “the business case can be made for higher, more sustainable levels of investment in water efficiency, metering, and infrastructure” via a fuller recognition of water costs and values.

Launching the report, Murad Qureshi AM, Chair of the Health and Environment Committee, said:

“Water is a precious resource that is in limited supply and more must be done to preserve it if we’re to avoid a repeat of drought restrictions in future years.

“Our report sets out practical steps that can be taken in London to ease the pressure on our water supplies by reducing leakage and consumption in the home.”

The report says there is significant scope for improving water efficiency in homes – through aerators on taps and hosepipe fittings, for example. The Committee also wants the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to reconsider excluding cold water efficiency measures when the national Green Deal comes in – the measures have so far been included in the Mayor’s RE:NEW programme. However, RE:NEW is only funded to the end of 2012/13.

The Committe points out that going forward from 2012, the context for home retrofit is now the nationwide Green Deal scheme. However, this is focussed on carbon savings, and does not include measures to save cold water, which account for about half the water savings achieved under RE:NEW. The GLA sees the omission of water efficiency from the Green Deal as a missed opportunity and effectively significant cost. According to the report, when  Thames Water and Veolia Water Central met with the Committeethey "had not given full consideration to the Green Deal as an avenue for their water efficiency work."

The Committee now want DECC to immediately review the exclusion of cold water efficiency measures from the Green Deal, and report its conclusions back to the Committee by the end of 2012.

The Committee is also calling for water companies to step up the pace of installing water meters in all properties by 2025. Currently only around a quarter of London’s households have water meters. The report also recommends that Ofwat should work with water companies to implement social tariffs for water billing to support essential water usage by vulnerable people.

The report also says that water trading between the water utility companies needs to be encouraged in order to to get rid of the inequality of what it describes as a “post code lottery” in London where the lifting of hosepipe bans was dependent upon decisions by the local water supplier. In the Committee’s view the provisions on water trading between neighbouring areas could support a sustainable, efficient and equitable management of future water scarcity across London, to avoid a situation where hosepipe bans affect some parts of London but not adjacent areas. However, it does not want this to lead to funding being diverted from priority water saving measures such as mains replacement programmes.

Mayor of London Boris Johnston has already taken active steps to address the problem with the development of a water strategy which proposes actions in partnership with water companies and others to improve water management, under six main headings:

• Improve the water efficiency of existing buildings

• Ensure all new development is super-water-efficient

• Raise Londoners’ awareness of the financial benefits of increased water efficiency

• Increase the number of homes with a water meter

• Change the way Londoners pay for their water

• Continue to tackle leakage - the Water Strategy expects leakage reductions of over 20 million litres per day by 2018 in London.