Our aim is simple – to secure South East England’s water supplies for the future against a predicted shortfall of up to 2.7 billion litres by 2050 while helping the environment to thrive and providing wider societal benefits.
Securing future water supplies requires the region’s water companies to work together, alongside regulators, other water users and water companies in other regions.
Our revised draft regional plan considers South East England’s future water needs for public water supply, industries such as agriculture and energy and the environment.
By working with others, we will combat a predicted 2.7 billion-litre water shortfall, through:
Find out more about how we'll plug the gap by reading the pages above, or see our timeline of how our plan has been developed so far.
We identified all the factors that could change how much water is available in future and how much more we’ll need to supply a growing population.
We developed long-term forecasts to help us understand what could happen to our water supplies in years to come and used this to develop an adaptive plan, which considers a range of different futures.
And looked at the future water needs of other water users and how much they’ll need to run their business in the years to come.
We identified all options available to help us secure our water resources.
This included reducing demand by tackling leaks and water efficiency; schemes to provide extra water such as reservoirs and water recycling; and nature-based schemes to help make the environment more resilient.
When assessing our options we considered how much they will cost, how much water they will provide, how they will impact the environment and how resilient they will be to future stresses.
Our regional investment model identified a plan to secure the region’s water supplies at the lowest cost possible, while meeting all legal and regulatory requirements and policy expectations.
We identified criteria, in addition to cost, to assess different plans against to help us develop a best value plan which could bring added benefits.
This included natural capital creation, biodiversity improvements, benefits and risks to the environment, the level of resilience and the cost to future generations, as well as which options customers preferred.
We compared different plans and produced a draft best value regional plan for consultation, which closed on 20 February 2023.
We submitted our revised draft regional plan to Defra on 31 August 2023, alongside our response to feedback received during our consultation.
Our revised draft plan is a regional solution to address a projected 2.7 billion-litre water shortfall, due to climate change, population growth and increased protection for the environment, and make our water supplies more resilient.
It contains a mix of options, balancing ambitious reductions to leakage and water consumption with investment in new water sources.
We expect to finalise our regional plan in 2025.
2020
Produced our initial Future Water Resource Requirements Position Statement for the South East region
Consulted on the Resilience Framework that will be used to develop the Draft Regional Plan
Consulted on the Method Statements that set out the methodology we will use to develop our Draft Regional Plan
Consulted on the proposed regional policies that will form the crux of our Draft Regional Plan
2021
Consulted on the objectives, criteria and metrics that we intend to use to help us identify the ‘Best Value’ Draft Regional Plan
Updated our Future Water Resource Requirements Position Statement
Published our updated Method Statements and the decision making framework we will use to identify the ‘Best Value’ Draft Regional Plan
All five regional groups across England reconciled their draft regional plans to ensure national alignment
2022
Published our Emerging Regional Plan for public consultation
We produced a summary of response to our consultation on our draft Emerging Regional Plan and how we’ll addressed the feedback received
We published our Draft Regional Plan for consultation, which opened in November 2022 and ran until February 2023.
Water companies also consulted on their individual draft Water Resource Management Plans.
2023
We published our response to the draft regional plan consultation. Each individual water company published a Statement of Response to their draft Water Resource Management Plan consultation and published a revised draft Water Resources Management Plan
2024
Ofwat outlined its draft determination of water companies 2025 to 2030 business plans, which include the investment needed in water resources schemes
Southern Water held a public consultation on its revised draft Water Resource Management Plan from 11 September to 4 December 2024
Five of our member water companies received approval from Defra to publish their final WRMPs for 2025 to 2075
We published a recommendations paper with six considerations to improve the future of regional water resources planning
Ofwat revealed its final determination of water companies' 2025 to 2030 business plans, including the amount of funding available for water resources schemes and nationally significant infrastructure schemes.
2025
The new investment period starts for water companies’ 2025 to 2030 business plans, 2025 to 2075 Water Resource Management Plans and our 2025 to 2075 Regional Plan for South East England.
