The state of water resources in England and Wales has attracted considerable publicity over the last few years and given the demands of climate change and population growth, investing in improving the resilience and capacity of our network is likely to become increasingly important.

Water Resources Plan

Our draft Water Resources Management Plan sets out our proposed 25 year strategy for maintaining the balance between the supply and demand for water in our region and maintaining our service level of no more than three hosepipe bans per 100 years. We estimate we could face a shortfall in our capacity to meet demand of around 240 megalitres (Ml/d) by 2024. For the period from 2010 to 2015.  our outline plan is:

• To reduce leakage to a new economic level of 475 Ml/d by 2015. This will provide an additional 25 Ml/d of water to meet demand.
• To accelerate domestic customer metering in our most water stressed zones through a policy of compulsory metering when a property changes occupier and further promotion of our existing free meter option. This is expected to reduce demand by around 3Ml/d.
• To get the most value out of our existing water resources by improving the connectivity of our network. For example, we propose to increase the capacity of our Derwent Valley Aqueduct which will enable us to move more water from the north of our region, where we have a surplus, to the south, where we have a deficit. This should provide around 60Ml/d of additional water in the south.
• To increase water efficiency through working with our domestic and commercial customers to install more water efficient equipment and to promote water conserving behaviour. We will develop our proposals further once we have the results later this year of the industry wide Waterwise work and our own water efficiency trials.We expect these activities to reduce demand by around 2Ml/d.
• We do not propose to develop any new sources of water in the 2010 to 2015 period. In the longer term, we have identified the need to develop new water resources schemes that will deliver around 125Ml/d of new supply capability.

Drought plan

Natural variability in our climate causes periods of rainfall deficit, known as droughts. We need plans to cope with what can be a significant shortage of water in these years. We have a published Drought Plan which sets out how we will manage our resources and supply system in dry years, to maintain our service to our customers at as high a level as is possible.

If you would like to look at a paper version of the Plan you can arrange to visit our offices at

2297 Coventry Road, Birmingham, B26 3PU or
STW Leicester Water Centre, Gorse Hill, Anstey Lane, Leicester LE7 7GU or
STW Shelton, Welshpool Rd, Shelton, Shrewsbury SY3 8BJ

In all cases you must make prior arrangements to visit these offices by calling 0121 722 4000 and asking for Facilities Management at which ever office you wish to visit. The Plan will be available to view between the hours of 9.00am and 4.00pm during normal working days.

Out performing our leakage target  

We have outperformed against our leakage target for 2007/08, after failing to meet it for the last two years. We are determined to maintain our performance, in line with our written commitment to Ofwat, for the remaining years of AMP4.

With water scarcity potentially increasing, being able to reduce leakage becomes ever more important for our customers, for the environment and for our business. We have succeeded this year as a result of better network maintenance, better response times to finding and fixing leaks and a better understanding of where water is used and where it is wasted in our system.

In 2007/08, we found and fixed over 39,000 leaks, compared with 37,000 in 2006/07. We have also continued to encourage water efficiency amongst our customers.

Encouraging water efficiency

We actively promote the efficient use of water among our customers [Link to Water Efficiciency under the Environment tab]. To this end, we take a twin track approach targeting behaviours and products.
In 2007/08, we distributed 137,800 cistern displacement devices, 3,169 water butts and 512 other water efficient products including showerheads and shower timers. To raise awareness of water efficiency and influence customer behaviour we distributed 201,686 self audit guides.

To help improve our knowledge on how best to advise our customers on water efficiency we completed two trials. The first involved the installation of water efficient products in domestic homes and a second installing efficient products in schools. We are using the outputs of these trials to inform our strategy and develop our programme to deliver effective water efficiency methods to our customers. We will continue to build on our programme and develop more ways to encourage customers to use water efficiently

Fitting meters for free

Our free meter option scheme allows customers to change from traditional billing method of Rateable Value , top paying for the water they use measured by a water meter. In 2007/08 we installed 33,215 meters under the scheme, increasing the total metered domestic base to 30.2%. We anticipate that during 2008/09 we will install approximately 37,000 meters.