Environment Agency chair backs compulsory water metering and more hosepipe bans

All parts of the country should have a compulsory water meter, not just those areas classified as water-stressed, the chair of the Environment Agency has said.

Alan Lovell said the dry summer of 2022 was “a warning shot fired and a wake-up call for what’s to come” and warned that the next drought is not far away.

He also advocated for more hosepipe bans to raise public awareness of water consumption.

Speaking at the annual Waterwise conference, he said water metering is the key to being water efficient. This will help people to know how much they use and ensure they are paying their share.

“Metering should become compulsory across England not just in areas of water stress,” Lovell said and added that smart metering would be more advantageous than older style devices.

He stressed that encouraging customers to use less water would be more dependent on associating consumption with the impact on environment, rather than saving money.

Raising the cost of water “is unlikely to help”, Lovell said and retold an anecdote from former chief executive of SSE and Thames’ chair Ian Marchant who had said SSE did not notice an impact on usage until average energy prices hit £1,600 a year.

The head of the environmental regulator also pushed for more hosepipe bans. He said that although water companies don’t like to impose temporary restrictions, he wants to see them used more as one of the few ways consumers see “the fragility of the system” and become conscious of their usage.

Lovell reflected that it has been five years since former Agency’s chief executive James Bevan delivered his ”Jaws of Death” speech at the same event. Since then, Lovell said drought has become a very real concern particularly seen in 2022. Forecasts now suggest there will be a 4.8 billion litre daily deficit by 2050, without strong action.

Smart water metering forms a significant part of water company plans for the coming five year regulatory period, with government and regulators alike giving their backing to the urgency of rolling out meters infrastructure.

Lovell said progress on reducing leakage and demand had “not been encouraging” so far but shoots of improvement were now being seen.

The sharp focus on the industry in recent years has included scrutiny of infrastructure spending. Lovell said the prioritisation of lower bills in the past 15 years was now changing but needs more of a step up. In his view the problem stretches back far further and said the nation has underspent on water infrastructure since the Victorian times. “It will take time to get to where we want to be in terms of water resources and quality. By 2030 we might not have cured these problems but we will have a brick in the wall”.

The benefits of metering were shared by Anglian Water’s customer engagement and behaviour change manager, Sarah Castelvecchi, who said there had been a marked improvement over time in demand. Areas that had smart meters installed in 2017 have the lowest per capita consumption in the region and repairs made more quickly by customers who had been alerted to leaks or continuous flow identified by metering.

This trend was also shared by Severn Trent’s metering lead Anthony Hickinbottom, who reported that 73% of billpayers had quickly fixed continuous flow leaks when the company had been able to identify them using smart metering data.