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The stereotype of the UK as a perpetually damp island with infinite water supplies has been replaced over this summer by a landscape of brown lawns. Meanwhile, the national sport of discussing the weather has taken on a more concerned tone.
However, despite this very high awareness of the prolonged dry conditions, the introduction of hosepipe bans in a select number of areas has still been met with resistance.
With drought expected to be officially declared in parts of England today, there is a clear opportunity to use this moment as a catalyst for wider engagement on water efficiency. Utility Week talks to experts about the water sector stepping up to the challenge of changing the behaviour of millions of billpayers
An unwelcome return
The last time hosepipe bans were imposed was in 2012 but the experience was worlds apart. A decade ago there was greater show of unity between the sector and its governing bodies, even to the extent that Defra ministers defended companies’ leakage rates in Parliament. Fast forward ten years and the water industry has been headline news for all the wrong reasons. As pollution incidents leapfrog up the political agenda, there is no cohesion. Fear of drought, leakage and usage restrictions give further opportunities to blame companies alone rather than recognise the bigger picture and the role everyone can play in finding solutions.
Trevor Bishop, head of Water Resources South East, which is coordinating the water resource management plan for the seven water companies in the south east for the coming decades, was director of water resources at Ofwat during the 2012 ban. He tells Utility Week there is an opportunity to be harnessed here.
“We should not need a crisis to do the right thing, but it certainly focuses minds particularly for politicians who have many things competing for their attention,” Bishop says. “We need to use that opportunity. 2012 made people pay attention and help set the agenda for the vital 2014 Water Act. We may well find that there are people asking questions about whether there needs to be changes made on the back of this current situation. We need to ensure we remain opened minded to genuine change and progress.”
This sentiment is echoed by Waterwise’s head of efficiency engagement Stephanie Hurry who says the momentum was lost after the last fear of water shortages, but it should be seized.
Waterwise believes water efficiency needs to be a regular point of discussion in Parliament if the UK is to avoid future summer hosepipe bans and is calling on government to support policy around reducing personal consumption.
“A few years ago there had been dry weather and people were talking about it, we all thought it was the moment to move forward on water efficiency but in recent years it has stalled.”
Could the current situation be the tipping point to focus minds on water resources and resilience for the future?
Building trust
Bishop believes more needs to be done by the sector to bolster its perception in the public’s eyes before expecting customers to make changes that equate to using 25% less water a day.
He says: “The reputation of the sector is going to be more important in the future than ever before if we are to ask customers to help deliver our shared ambition to reduce water demand in households nationally to 110 litres per person per day (l/p/d). It’s a massive change experiment we are asking society to participate in and it will, in part, rely on wide scale behaviour change which, in turn, will rely on customers engaging positively with the industry.”
Media representation and public reaction to current messaging about temporary usage bans has ranged from denial to negative, with many citing leakage and executive pay in their resistance to restrictions.
Hurry tells Utility Week these points are a recurring backlash to water efficiency messaging and believes the industry could do more to highlight what it does to drive down leaks and in resilience work for an unpredictable future.
“It would be great to see the water industry be more open and transparent around leakage and the work it is doing”, Hurry said. This would, she says, help raise awareness when customers are being asked to limit their own consumption.
However, another key voice in the conversation, the National Infrastructure Committee (NIC), is hesitant to add the burden to the public.
Reflecting on progress made since the publication of the NIC’s Preparing for a Drier Future in 2018, Professor Jim Hall, commissioner at the committee, says the current dry weather is “a manageable risk”.
The NIC called for three-prong approach to bolster resilience as the century progresses – additional water sources, hammering down leakage and demand management. Hall points to progress across all these areas. There are 17 projects in planning and development under the Regulators Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Development (RAPID), which was established to remove hurdles and address barriers of getting large schemes off the ground. RAPID will make a significant difference, Hall suggests, especially on these “big ticket” developments for novel resources and transfers between regions.
‘It’s a lot to ask of the public’
He is sceptical however that behaviour change will get to a point where it can have a significant impact on addressing the deficit and that it “remains to be seen how much water companies are able to change behaviour.”
He explains: “Some things are outside the direct control of the sector – such as home appliances with high water consumption and customer-side supply pipes. Thames Water alone estimated one third of its leakage comes from customers’ pipes. Companies have a role in identifying and helping fix customer side leaks, but they can’t always directly address them.”
Previous and current publicity campaigns and awareness raising have a pretty small effect, he points out. “I’m not surprised by that. Householders have a lot to think about and can be confused about what the right thing to do is.”
He explains that although the Environment Agency introducing and explaining hosepipe bans does raise awareness, relying on “well informed and well-motivated water users” to know and to do the right things is not the ideal solution.
“It’s a lot to ask people to understand what is needed – energy and carbon may be more straightforward but water can depend on where you are in the country and whether there is a lot or too little available. People don’t realise droughts develop over years, so it’s a lot to ask of the public,” Hall explains.
He stresses however that behaviour change should not be abandoned, but calls for more precise information to come from metering to target behaviour changing efforts where they can have the greatest impact.
Waterwise backs the approach that householders should not be expected to do all the heavy lifting to save water amidst myriad other life pressures where water will not be front of minds.
While public campaigns have come and gone, none has stuck in a meaningful way according to Karen Gibbs who is heading up a programme of focus at water watchdog CCW. “We need a sustained message to connect people’s consumption in their homes to the wider water environment,” Gibbs says. “We see that connection is very weak at best at the moment. Our research consistently makes the point that people struggle to make the connection between water and sewerage services and the impacts on their local river or beach.”
This was evidenced in recent research by CCW to gauge levels of understanding and what changes households would be willing to make.
Gibbs explains the research showed a superficial knowledge that behaviour links to the environment only. “When we tried to drill down to identify what that impact would be, people really struggled,” she says. “People don’t really understand how their tap water gets to them or what happens to it when they’re finished with it.”
She says this was equally true for people living in ‘seriously water stressed’ areas where messaging was amplified.
Gibbs believes that to build a case for action, the message must emphasise why saving water matters. “The default messaging is telling people to use less water but what’s missing is the why. People need to understand how pressing the issues are and what they can do to help – we need that buy in from consumers.”
Bridging the gap
Mile Keil, director of policy explains this is why CCW will focus on people and environment: “As the consumer body representing people, if you look at the Water Act it’s clear we have a role to advise consumers on relevant issues so it is within our remit. Seeing the challenges we face, bridging that gap is so important so it’s something we absolutely be doing as the consumer body.”
He says the work will complement rather than duplicate what is already underway in the sector. “This isn’t about a water efficiency campaign or a sewer misuse campaign in isolation. We’re trying to make the connection in a more sustained way so people really value and understand water and understand where it goes.”
As a trusted voice with established relationships with partners across the sector as well as its own research and access to others, the group is well-positioned for the task.
Keil explains: “We need two billion litres of extra water by 2050 and a considerable amount is expected to come from demand reduction, so this people and environment programme has a really sharp focus and challenges we need addressing. If we don’t connect people to the environment, if we don’t help and motivate people to change behaviour we’re going to be in trouble and struggle to balance supply and demand.”
He notes that while investment for water resources and leakage reduction have been more generously funded, demand management has not. “Where is the RAPID equivalent for consumption or behaviour change?” Keil asks. “We’re not seeing hundreds of millions of pounds being spent yet the expectation is it will deliver massive reduction in demand. So where is the credible plan that underpins that expectation?”
While the CCW team do not anticipate “cracking it” with the people and environment programme, they believe it can be a catalyst. “We will make noise about this because we can’t sit back so we need to do far more in this area, it’ll snowball because it needs to.”
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