CPRE South East
Campaigning to Protect the South East's Countryside

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Foreword and Summary

The latest drought may be officially over, but despite the rain since April and recent floods the South East's water-supply crisis has not passed.

• In the past 18 years, some parts of the region have been under hose pipe bans eight times, even though these measures are designed for 1-in-10-year conditions.
• Heavy rain and floods alternating with periods of drought emphasise the increasingly unpredictable nature of our weather patterns, and the need to move on from our historic dependence on steady and predictable conditions.
• The reality is that floods do not compensate for drought conditions, not least for reasons of water quality. "Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink" has taken on a new meaning in 2007.
• Further structural pressures on our water resources – from housing growth, climate change and environmental legislation – mean we could face deficits of a billion litres a day by 2025.
• The Government and the water companies haven't fully woken up to the new realities of water supply – their strategies rely too much on building reservoirs that may never fill.
• Only when there is a change in approach will there be a reasonable chance of balancing supply and demand through the difficult and uncertain decades ahead.

In this report, CPRE South East recommends the adoption of new policies which conserve and recycle the South East's increasingly scarce and erratic water supplies.

The South East is finally beginning to wake up to the seriousness of the water supply crisis, thanks to recent hose pipe bans and emergency powers. But after a good wet winter and devastating floods, we are in danger of being lulled back to sleep instead of thinking and behaving differently about water.

For far too long water resource management for the South East has been based solely on security of supply, alongside a belief that there was always enough left "for the environment". In an equable climate, with relatively modest levels of development and water consumption, that was probably not an unreasonable assumption. The problem is that the assumption no longer fits the world we live in.

We have continuously increased abstractions from rivers and boreholes to meet the demands of many more households using much more water. This has resulted in water tables and rivers being structurally depleted and wetlands degraded. The wildlife dependent on them has been forced into narrower corridors, with some populations reduced to crisis levels. The climate is not as equable as it was: winter droughts and stormier, flashy rainfall and less predictable conditions may be here to stay as we face the effects of climate change, even if we are told this will "settle down' to warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers. The sharply fluctuating conditions of recent months make it unwise to predict and wiser to find ways to be less dependent on the weather.

We increase the stress on our water systems by building more homes than those systems can cope with. We surround them with more hard-run-off surfaces – roofs, driveways and roads. Government housing targets add to the water stress. All of these actions are supported and institutionalised in the regulatory frameworks for water supply, building regulations and behaviours that we all, as normal, right-thinking individuals, have called good practice or "doing the right thing".

Now, however, we are beginning to realise this isn't "doing the right thing" at all. The level of stress on water supply in the South East and on its environment means we have to think differently about water and behave differently too, using new financial frameworks and incentives to effect the necessary changes. If we do this, water can be an almost infinitely available, renewable resource.

The issue is urgent, and hose pipe bans and floods are a wake-up call. Government has been severely challenged for having ignored water supply totally in its Sustainable Communities Plan. Detailed examination of the South East Plan makes it clear that development is already limited by water supply, which is too often still bundled in as another item of "infrastructure".

Institutional change is beginning: the Environment Agency (EA) can now exercise stronger controls on abstractions to meet EU regulations on the environmental status of rivers, groundwater and special protection areas for wildlife. But the regulatory framework, operated by Ofwat, that governs the investment and pricing decisions and priorities for the water industry is still based too much on old assumptions of the primacy of security of supply over conservation and recycling.

As we see with so much of the sustainability agenda, consumers are more ready to change than institutions, but need the facilities and pricing signals to do so. Metering, tariff incentives and water-saving equipment lead to lower water consumption, and encourage the development of water conservation mindsets. This is tested, established fact, but the work needs to be more actively and urgently applied in the South East.

It is in this context that CPRE SE's water expert Graham Warren has reviewed the current water supply work of the Environment Agency and water companies, and drawn on the findings of the House of Lords' Science and Technology Committee's report of 2006. Following Graham's first, county-scale report – for CPRE Kent, published in June 2006 – this study looks at the South East region of England. It considers the key factors influencing water supply and demand, and makes some sobering forecasts of future supply/demand balance.

The report is one of the first to take into account the reality of current, climate-change affected dry-year frequency in the South East – more like one in two years than the 1-in-10 model the water companies work to. The report's estimates for future resource imbalance also consider the impact of the European Water Framework Directive, which aims to give back to the environment a fairer share of our continent's water. The legacy of over abstraction and habitat depletion is only very slowly beginning to mend, and is at constant threat from new proposals for development.

This report has, however, been written and published in a spirit of optimism rather than despair, because solutions to our water supply problems are known. Investment criteria can be changed and consumers are ready to alter their behaviour, given the facilities and encouragement to do so. On top of this, we have examples from some other parts of the world where water is managed differently, with much more emphasis on conservation and recycling. (This is notably true of Australia, and we should perhaps be cheered by the fact that the UK's largest water company is now under Australian ownership.)

The report sets out the water situation as the facts appear to a hydrologist. From it CPRE South East draws five key conclusions and produces five key recommendations essential for the direction and delivery of a more sustainable approach to water supply in the South East.

CPRE South East’s conclusions

1. The South East is already facing a severe deficit in supply today – annual demand is close to average year supply and supply is well below peak demand in dry conditions. By 2025, with the effects of climate change, better care for our environment under the Water Framework Directive and massive housing growth, the public water deficit could be as much as a billion litres per day based on the 1-in-10 dry year design criterion on which supply is assessed.

2. The Government has failed to recognise the reality of water limits under current operating conditions, either as a constraint on house building or in the urgency for changes in regulatory frameworks.

3. The financial framework for the water companies is wrong for the conditions that now exist in the South East. Investment in conservation and recycling needs to have much higher financial priority. And conservation is still not being adequately promoted by water companies, through leakage reduction or in enabling actions to customers. The concept of an “economic level of leakage” is an outdated criterion for managing a scarce resource, and is incompatible with appeals to consumers to do more. Good communication alone is an inadequate incentive to consumers keen to conserve but needing the facilities to do so.

4. The primary focus of public discussion is still on reservoirs, even though these are becoming less viable as river flows are less reliable, and winter storage assumptions are challenged by recent meteorological evidence.

5. Water re-use and indirect recycling of waste water through water courses is largely ignored when it should be a major structural element in water supply strategies. It offers us the chance to live more compatibly with our environment and does not involve any sacrifice.

CPRE South East’s recommendations

1. First priority should be given to restoring the water environment. The work of the EA needs to be supported to reach consensus on scientifically sound but not over precautionary ways to achieve an equitable balance between the needs of the environment and the needs of public supply.

2. Spatial Strategies and other Government housing plans for the Sustainable Communities Plan, “Eco Towns” etc must take greater account of environmental limits on water supply in current circumstances, and not just assume the water companies can be bound by their mandate to provide.

3. The operating framework and criteria for water supply needs to alter in response to the changes we are already seeing from climate change. The mandate, and if necessary, the organisation, of Ofwat should be changed to initiate a much stronger approach to conservation. “Economic level of leakage” criteria should be strengthened.

4. We should think and behave differently about water supply. This is not just a communication and mindset issue: it is structural, financial and regulatory. Change needs to be joined up so that the incentives for water companies are consistent with those for consumers. Water efficiency needs to be a standard expectation in all new building – to save money as well as the resource – and retro-fitting of existing homes should be tested as part of Section106 planning agreements.

5. Water supply strategies have to change. It needs to be recognised that reservoirs are no longer the first choice technical solution. This is not mainly about local rejection; they are increasingly unsound as a technical solution given the level of water stress from over-abstraction and their increasing unreliability under climate change conditions. Water recycling needs to be a leading part of all water companies’ business plans, and the brief from Ofwat needs to reflect this. Discharge of fresh, clean wastewater to the sea from sewage treatment plants needs to stop.

Christine Drury, Chair, CPRE South East.

Further Information

• A Water Resource Strategy for the South East of England