Taskforce defines resilience for water sector

The water industry taskforce created by Ofwat to determine what the resilience duty means for the sector has come up with a definition.

The group, which has had two meetings so far, has an initial definition of resilience as “the ability to cope with, and recover from, disruption, trends and variability in order to maintain services for people and protect the natural environment”.

There are further discussions taking place within the taskforce, chaired by Waterwise managing director Jacob Tompkins, over the final wording of the definition, and it is likely the phrase “now in and in the future” will be added.

The group has also created a programme of work packages which it will complete before the end of the year.

These include the taskforce working with students from Oxford University, Cambridge University, and the London School of Economics to analyse the existing resilience structures within the industry.

Once this work has been completed, it will help to shape the taskforce’s work, which includes building a matrix of impacts and interactions within different sectors and the creation of a list of stakeholders for the group to question.

Tompkins told Utility Week there “is a lot of stuff happening” including discussions on whether indicators for resilience are needed, what they could be, and whether this would be a single number, or a collection of numbers.

Albion Water chairman, and member of the resilience taskforce, Jerry Bryan, said that “it is still early days [for the taskforce] but things are looking positive and are moving forward”.

The taskforce, which was created as an arms-length body by regulator Ofwat in response to the regulator being given a new statutory duty for resilience in the Water Act last year.

The task-and-finish group will work for a year producing a series of short reports before producing a final report which will feed into the regulator’s thinking for the PR19 policy framework.