Regaining the narrative on drinking water

Tap water in the UK is among the best in the world, yet the sector that produces it is routinely criticised over its performance by the media and politicians. At the Drinking Water Quality Conference 2023, sector experts explored how we regain the narrative. They also debated how we can eradicate lead from drinking water and whether the current debate over unsafe concrete in schools could be a gateway.

“In my book, we’re not doing enough to highlight the good work that’s going on across the sector. It’s all very defensive.”

Steve Kaye, chief executive of the UK Water Industry Research, summed up the feelings expressed throughout the day at the Drinking Water Quality Conference in Birmingham this week.

The event brought together water quality experts from across the country to discuss the opportunities and challenges of maintaining high levels of water quality in the face of increasing demand and the impact of climate change.

Alongside the use of novel technologies to fight forever chemicals, the need to manage lead in water strategies and discussion around best practice in catchment management, there was a running theme around the need to communicate the achievements and ambitions of the drinking water sector.

This has become increasingly the case, with separate concerns over storm overflow releases into rivers and the financial resilience of water companies being conflated with performance more generally.

It was a topic tackled by Marcus Rink, head of the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI), in his opening address to the conference.

He pointed out that UK is one of only six countries globally to be ranked as having no link between water and disease. He went on to point to almost 100% (99.7%) compliance with drinking water regulations and microbial compliance at 99.9% – citing this as “a fantastic achievement”.

He added: “We are in an incredibly fortunate position. We can forget sometimes just what good quality drinking water we have.”

So, how do we re-establish this link for the public between water companies and the protection of health and delivery of a world-leading service? It was a question I posed to Rink, who responded: “Drinking water matters to people. Research has shown that. Newspapers hook on to a topic that matters to people because it gets their attention.

“In drinking water the narrative crosses over from wastewater. Those news articles on storm overflows dent the confidence of people in their water company. That immediately makes people think what does that mean for my drinking water.

“We are one of the top six countries in the world producing the best quality drinking water. How have we lost that narrative? There needs to be some collective, strategic thought on how that narrative can change.”

Kaye agreed, saying the sector should not be afraid to share the science with consumers, even if some may dis-engage.

He said: “Historically the water industry has been an invisible service and deliberately so. But that’s meant that people don’t really understand what we do. There are different types of customers – some who are more interested in the environment and some who are interested in saving money. We should be talking to those customers that are interested and demonstrate we’re protecting the environment and saving carbon emission. We’re not making anywhere near enough of that.”

Hugh Thomas, water treatment service line director at Atkins, urged the sector against tackling aggressive media coverage head-on and instead engage directly with sections of society.

“It’s incumbent on us to engage with schools, universities and colleges about the difference the water sector makes and how they can play a part in the future of it – how they can make a difference to people’s lives and environment.”

Samantha Vince, head of supply compliance at Wessex Water, spoke about the need to talk to consumers in their own language. Her company has taken a proactive approach of writing directly to all consumers when it identifies a change (for example because of zone water changes) that may be noticed at the tap.

She said: “We shouldn’t be afraid to talk to customers about what we’re doing operationally. It has struck me listening to the conference what fantastic engineering we’ve been talking about.

“As a country we celebrate Brunel and all the great engineers we’ve produced but as water companies we don’t often talk about our own engineers with our customers.

“In these letters to customers we’ve tried to have a grown-up conversation and say – this is the service reservoir, this is what we’re doing – and explain what’s happening at an operational level.”

Karen Gibbs of CCW welcomed Wessex’s approach and urged other companies to think carefully about the language they use when talking to customers and the different touchpoints with customers. It follows research by CCW into “impenetrable” reports by water companies – instead proposing a single consumer-led dashboard providing consumers with company performance data on everything from billing to leakage rates.

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