Water Resources Management Plan

Ensuring that there are sufficient water supplies available to meet our customers' needs is a challenging and complex task.

Every five years we are required by Defra to produce a Water Resources Management Plan which sets out how we plan to manage water resources over the next 25 years.

In May 2008 we published our draft plan covering the period from 2010 to 2035.

We are running a public consultation from 7 May 2008 to 27 August 2008 to hear our customers' and other stakeholders' views on the draft plan.

 Visit our consultation website

Find out more about our 25-year plan

We also have a section on our website dedicated to our 25-year plan. For further details, please follow the link below.

 Read more about our 25-year plan 2010 to 2035

In line with the expectations of our stakeholders and customers, we are proposing that we use enhanced demand management activities combined with development of new resource schemes where these are required to achieve the supply demand balance.

The main elements of the draft plan are:

• Continuation of our Victorian mains replacement programme in London supported by active leakage control to continue to bring down the level of leakage
• A ten-year targeted and progressive programme of compulsory metering, with the aim to individually meter all domestic properties where it is cost beneficial to do so. See 'Forecast meter penetration' graph below.
• An enhanced water efficiency programme, where water efficiency information and activities will be offered to every domestic customer over the next ten years
• An integrated demand management approach, which will maximise the links between leakage, metering and water efficiency programmes to optimise the cost benefit and increase sustainability
• Development of new water resources where demand management alone cannot balance supply and demand. Key schemes include the Upper Thames Major Resource Development in 2021/22, groundwater development near Goring, Oxfordshire in 2014/15 and artificial recharge of groundwater in South London in 2013/14

Forecast meter penetration

* 80 per cent of individual households, but 100 per cent of connections to our mains by 2020
AMP = Asset Management Plan

Following our public consultation in 2008, the final Water Resources Management Plan will be published in 2009.

In line with our plan, we are also working to complete the final version of our statutory Drought Plan, and this will be completed in early summer 2008.