Utility Week

8 | SEPTEMBER 2022 | UTILITY WEEK Water Analysis Drought puts focus oncutting demand Utility Week talks to experts about the water sector stepping up to the challenge of changing the behaviour of millions of billpayers. T he caricature of the UK as a perpetu- ally damp island with in nite water supplies has been replaced over this summer by a landscape of brown lawns. Meanwhile, the national sport of dis- cussing the weather has taken on a more concerned•tone. However, despite the very high awareness of the prolonged dry conditions, the intro- duction of hosepipe bans in several regions has still been met with resistance. Drought was o• cially declared in parts of England in mid-August, and clearly this pre- sents an opportunity for wider engagement on water e• ciency. An unwelcome return The last time hosepipe bans were imposed was in 2012 but the world has changed a lot since then. A decade ago there was a greater show of unity between the sector and its gov- erning bodies, to the extent that ministers from the Department for Environment, Food & Rural A† airs defended companies' leakage rates in Parliament. Fast forward ten years and the water industry has been headline news for all the wrong reasons. As pollution incidents leap- frog up the political agenda, there is no cohe- sion. Fear of drought, a spotlight on high leakage rates, and now usage restrictions, all give further provide ammunition to knock water companies for being at fault rather than recognise the bigger picture and the role everyone can play in nding solutions. Trevor Bishop, head of Water Resources South East, which is coordinating the Water Resource Management Plan for the seven water companies in the South East for the coming decades, was director of water resources at Ofwat during the 2012 ban. He tells Utility Week there is an opportunity to be harnessed here. "We should not need a crisis to do the right thing, but it certainly focuses minds particularly for politicians who have many things competing for their attention," Bishop says. "We need to use that opportunity. 2012 made people pay attention and help set the agenda for the vital 2014 Water Act. We may well nd that there are people asking questions about whether there needs to be changes made on the back of this current sit- uation. We need to ensure we remain open- minded to genuine change and progress." This sentiment is echoed by Waterwise's head of e• ciency engagement Stephanie Hurry, who says the momentum was lost a" er the last fear of water shortages, but it should be seized. Waterwise believes water e• ciency needs to be a regular point of discussion in parlia- ment if the UK is to avoid future summer hosepipe bans and is calling on government to support policy around reducing personal consumption. "A few years ago there had been dry weather and people were talking about it, we all thought it was the moment to move for- ward on water e• ciency but in recent years it has stalled," she says. Could the current situation be the tipping point to focus minds on water resources and resilience for the future? Building trust Bishop believes more needs to be done by the sector to bolster its perception in the public's eyes before expecting customers to make changes that equate to using 25% less water a day. He says: "The reputation of the sector is going to be more important than ever before if we are to ask customers to help deliver our shared ambition to reduce water demand in households nationally to 110 litres per per- son per day (l/p/d). It's a massive change experiment we are asking society to partici- pate in and it will, in part, rely on wide-scale behaviour change, which in turn will rely on customers engaging positively with the industry." Media representation and public reaction to current messaging about temporary usage bans has wither been merely negative or has continued on p10

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