Response to Consultation on The Government’s strategic priorities and objectives for Ofwat (April 2017)

We know Ofwat is keen to see larger-scale water efficiency and we supported Defra’s expectation that they “promote ambitious action to reduce leakage and per capita consumption”. The key elements of our response included the need to explicitly support variable infrastructure charging schemes linked to water efficiency for new housing developments; to enable water companies to take risks by working in collaboration with others to achieve better outcomes on water efficiency; for wider policy changes to deliver extended and enhanced water efficiency scenarios; to audit the impact of retail competition on water efficiency services and how this might translate to residential retail competition; to consider the potential contribution of water efficiency in upstream competition; and for third party auditing of business plans and final PR19 determinations for progress on water efficiency.