Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | SEPTEMBER 2022 | 9 Water The public is losing patience with hosepipe bans With temporary usage bans (TUBs) greeted with anger by the public and politicians, is it time to ban hosepipe bans? Customer perception of restrictions announced in August – the rst for a decade – have ranged from anger to outrage, and at Tory leadership hustings, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak each sug- gested billpayer rebates or nes for companies that impose restrictions. Environment secretary George Eustice pub- licly defended the use of TUBs as a necessary and approved step of water company drought plans designed to protect water resources. "No matter how hard the sector tries, some people see hosepipe bans as a failure of the industry. There has been some support but the overall message is negative in the national press headlines," Trevor Bishop, head of Water Resources South East (WRSE) tells Utility Week. With people unhappy about restrictions being imposed, is there an alternative? Cer- tainly not for this summer or the near future, but bringing forward infrastructure develop- ments for water resources together with ramping up demand management could allow companies to phase out the need forˆTUBs. "If they are not acceptable to society then the debate should be had to assess what it would take, what it would cost, and what the environmental impacts would be to reduce the current reliance on hosepipe restrictions in the future and give customers and politicians the chance to decide," Bishop said. Southern Water was the rst company to announce restrictions, in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Much of the company's supply is drawn from groundwater but in its western region, where the ban is in place, it abstracts from rivers – including chalk streams. Alison Hoyle, Southern's director of risk and compli- ance, tells Utility Week the company is focusing on education rather than enforcement when asking consumers to comply with the ban. She said customers have been receptive to the messaging, which focuses on protecting chalk streams and the environment rather than about saving money. "People are really proud of their local environment and we know that is one way our customers are engaging with the message rather than about saving water to save money," she explains. Despite customers receiving messaging in "a positive way", Hoyle says some are still unhappy. "We will always get challenges about leakage, people get frustrated about visible leaks without seeing improvements made on the invisible leaks." She says the sector attempts to "be the proverbial swan" whereby people see only the calm "when actually there is an awful lot of work going on that people don't see". Grumblings are ampli ed by social media, but have not translated into increased complaints or inbound contacts to the company, she says. "We have a high con dence that our customers are responsive and care about the local natural environment they are proud of." Imploring people to use water di" erently in their homes and gardens, even to bene t the wider environment, is not straightforward. Tanya Sephton, customer services director at South East Water, says engaging customers and creating behavioural change around how consumers use water is "without a doubt a challenging activity". "Over the past few years, we have developed and implemented a strong behavioural change programme to engage with our customers in a positive way," says Sephton. This has ranged from postcard drops to inform customers how water e• ciency devices can save them money, to targeting low a" luence areas through its partnership programme. "The recent high temperatures, coupled with the drier weather, have helped raise awareness of water scarcity and many custom- ers have engaged with us to better understand the importance of water and the need for all of us to use it responsibly," she says. "While we have seen an exceptional increase in demand during the past two months, we have also seen strong indicators that customers are trying to help reduce usage." The hot weather contributed to an almost 50% increase in bursts for the company, which it directly addressed in its communications to help billpayers understand why they occurred and what was being done to address them. "While it's a challenging balance to deliver the water e• ciency behavioural programme, we strongly believe that through using our own data, enhancing our understanding of custom- ers and by tailoring our messaging, customers are engaging with us and showing they are willing to support us." Protecting water environments and safe- guarding future water supplies is central to Water Resource Management Plans (WRMPs) created by each company. Regional plans will for the rst time also being used to take a broader view of areas with too much or too little water and how companies can support one another. WRSE, together with the other four regional water resources groups, are due to publish their dra™ plans in November so there would not be su• cient time to properly assess the feasibility of alternatives to restrictions for inclusion in the dra™ . However, if deemed desirable, this could be added ahead of the nal documents being produced the following September. WRMPs are one of several scheduled com- mitments the sector must follow that feed into and inform price review business plans, the next are due in 2024 (PR24) for 2025-30. PR24 plans will also be required to take planning and investment for managing combined sewer overflows (CSOs) into account to minimise the risk of harm to waterways from overflows. This will represent new spending for each water and sewerage company following public and political attention on river health. As a novel requirement, the cost of dealing with CSOs has only been estimated but is forecast to add billions to capex programmes. Bringing forward spending on major infrastructure for additional water resources such as reservoirs, transfers or water recycling would be a further addition to capex. Adding up these costs may mean that for many billpayers a brown lawn for a few weeks in the summer is more palatable than the cost of extra supplies. "While we have seen an exceptional increase in demand during the past two months, we have also seen strong indicators that customers are trying to help reduce usage." Tanya Sephton, customer services director at South East Water "While we have seen an exceptional increase in demand during the past two months, we have also seen strong indicators that customers are trying to help reduce usage."

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