Boards called upon to be active in drainage plans

Water company boards have been called on to take an active role in planning and supporting the creation of drainage and wastewater management plans (DWMP) including by promoting inter-sector collaboration.

The Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales and Ofwat have issued new guidance setting out what water and wastewater companies should prioritise when compiling their DWMPs that will feed into their business plans at PR24.

With assets coming under increasing pressure from growing populations and climate change, the plans are intended to help organisations plot investment in the short and medium term to ensure the systems run efficiently without harming the environment.

The new framework from government agencies and regulators says boards should ensure the plans are given sufficient resources for their development; give a clear signal to relevant teams about what they expect of the plans; take an active interest in development of the plans; challenge what is being done; and consider how the company’s operations and accountability can be improved by the plan. Boards should also be exemplars for encouraging multi-sector engagement on the plans and promoting them within the company and externally.

The document states: “Our ambition for the management of our drainage and wastewater assets and networks must be high. As we are all aware, these critical assets face increasing challenges as we experience a changing climate and population growth. We must have comprehensive plans for addressing these challenges, including operational issues such as storm overflows.

“The water industry has shown important leadership in collaborating on the development of this planning process, and we all want that collaboration to continue and evolve. The governments and regulators welcome companies’ early collaboration with them as plans develop. DWMPs must be a game-changer for managing drainage and sewerage, including wastewater, now and into the future.”

Drainage and wastewater management plans should meet six principles:

• Be comprehensive, evidence-based and transparent in assessing, as far as possible, current capacity and the actions that will be needed in five, ten and 25-year periods. Plans should align wherever possible with other strategic and policy planning tools.
• Strive to deliver resilient systems that will meet operational and other pressures and minimise system failures.
• Consider the impact of drainage systems on immediate and wider environmental outcomes including habitats and in developing options for mitigation to include consideration of environmental net gain and enhancement.
• Be collaborative – recognising the importance of sectors working together to consider current and future risks and needs and to deliver effective solutions, setting out how they will do this, how they have engaged with and responded to stakeholders.
• Show leadership – in considering the big picture for an organisation’s operational capacity to develop and deliver the plan, and mindful of linkages with other strategic planning frameworks.
• Improve customer outcomes and awareness and that solutions and actions provide both value for money and consider societal benefits.

The guidance calls on water companies to involve customers in DWMPs at an early stage and consider how this could be tied in with engagement on other areas such as water resource management plans. It says plans should give customers confidence that service levels will be maintained now and in the future, regardless of the impacts of climate change, population growth and tightening environmental standards. Any risks to long-term resilience should be clearly communicated to make sure they are acceptable to customers.

Where conflicts arise between the affordability and objectives of the plans, these trade-offs and how they will be managed should be explained.

On costs, the framework promotes the use of partnerships to bring an integrated approach to managing drainage that spreads the costs fairly between water billpayers, taxpayers, highway users and other relevant stakeholders.

It echoes the ambitions in the Environment Act, which was passed into law in November and put an emphasis on DWMPs as a part of efforts to significantly reduce harm from sewage discharges from storm overflows. Companies are expected to set out how “significant reductions” in usage of sewer overflows will be achieved. As in Defra’s strategic policy statement to Ofwat for PR24, the framework states that companies must first reduce harm from overflows where they discharge into sensitive sites.

For Welsh companies, the DWMPs should also include long and short-term plans to reduce the discharges from overflows, including better ways to treat sewage, enhanced storage capacity and the use of nature-based approached to reduce the volume of water entering sewers.

The guidance says collaborations should be explored to co-create and jointly-fund schemes that deliver benefits for multiple stakeholders.

The plans should address the priorities laid out in the strategic policy statement to Ofwat as well as national strategies around flooding, coastal erosion, managing surface water, the National Infrastructure Commission’s assessment, and where applicable, the Water Strategy for Wales.

Companies will publish their draft DWMPs this summer.