Water neutrality ‘should be included in planning policy’

Planning policy at national and local level should consider water neutrality and greater ambition on efficiency for new homes and developments to meet housing and population needs in the coming decades.

That was according to a panel of experts speaking at Waterwise’s webinar on water neutrality. The not-for-profit organisation produced a report in January to reignite the conversation about the issue, which had lost momentum in the past 10 years.

The Environment Agency is consulting on re-classifying seven areas of England as water stressed meaning 14 regions will be subject to mandatory water metering and increased efficiency drives. However, demand for housing and growing populations means these areas will have more homes and residents in the coming decades.

Participants pointed to funding and the need for coordination between water companies, developers and planning authorities early in any development, as key barriers.

Slow progress

Water resources manager for Kent County Council, Alan Turner, speaking on the Waterwise webinar on water neutrality, said: “There’s more complexity to water neutrality than to minimise use and offset the rest. Obviously, it’s not homes that use water, people do.”

Offering a local authority perspective to the challenges of having 200,000 planned homes being built in the Kent region in the coming decade and the building policy that informs plans. He said it would take 15 years for water neutral homes to be built because of a lag in planning and regulation.

“Water neutrality through the planning system is one approach but the key problem is can we afford to wait until 2035 to have a plan in place – even if we have one agreed now, that will start to bite and make a difference to water use in homes?” Turner asked after explaining the time it would take to create and implement such a document. “It won’t happen through the planning system for a long time because of that lag.”

Variation in planning regulation between authorities means inconsistency of targets and expectations, but also a backtracking in some cases on ambition around water efficiency. Turner cited the Dartford Council plan from 2011, which included water neutrality and a plan to move towards per capita consumption of 105 litres. However, he said this document is being updated to a less ambitious version with a 110l PCC and no inclusion of water neutrality.

“Local plans are renewed very infrequently and take a long time to produce and longer to implement because of the nature of planning and development. Housing due to be built in the next five years will have been approved based on the current requirements so it would take at least five years before a policy starts to implement.”

As well as slow progress, Turner questioned government attention to demand management considering the lack of inclusion of resource efficiency or environmental standards in the 2018 Garden Communities Programme, which focused on speed of delivery of new homes at scale.

One development of 8,5000 home development in Kent that secured funding through the Garden Communities Programme included a 90l PCC target in its draft and mentioned both carbon and water neutrality in its draft. However, the planning inspectorate rejected the 90l PCC requirement in favour of 110l PCC.

“The message was very much that going beyond 110l per person per day was not supported. One could assume that the purpose of building regulations was to improve the quality of homes and to raise standards, so the fact that 90 is unacceptable is odd – it’s meeting and even going beyond the 110 target, but that’s not the way it was seen by government agencies.”

Joined up effort

Ben Earl, director of sustainability and water efficiency at Skewb, spoke about the importance of behavioural change to address the crisis and save both water and carbon emissions as well as clear financing approach.

“Funding is a key enabler, how can we find innovative ways to fund this,” Earl said. “Everyone looks at efficiency as being the water company problem but there is a societal issue with water efficiency not just a water company problem with it.”

He said there needs to be a funding approach for more than just the water companies to pay for efficiency and called for joined up planning.

“Developers need to be working at the master planning ahead of the planning application being put in for this to occur. At that stage proper investment needs to come forward to enable all the different jigsaw pieces to align,” Earl said.

All parties agreed that engagement between developers, planning authorities and water companies at the planning stage is essential. Skewb is working to cross the divide between these in recognition that each of the players does not have the resources themselves to achieve this alone.

Turner added that the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), planning inspectorate and building regulators are “all powerful in this process” because local authorities have lost a lot much of their decision-making power in the past decade.

He said that to achieve minimising water use more widely through local planning policy would need a very clear, technically sound guidance, as well as robust evidence of need and deliverability; strong support from the water industry and strong central government statement in the NPPF.

Water neutrality in practice

As part of its sustainability programme, Sainsburys built two pilot water neutral stores, with support from its self-supply partner WaterScan.

Amy Blackwell, utilities and carbon reporting manager for Sainsburys, explained the organisation’s efforts to drive water use down towards neutrality by 2040. The group has reduced usage by 30 per cent compared to 2005/05 even while its store estate grew. It has revised its targets and trialled stores with the objective of having the total water use after the development not exceed the total use before the site was developed. This was achieved through reducing, reusing and offsetting water.

She said that carbon and plastics are higher on the business’ sustainability agenda and it proved harder to get buy-in for water saving initiatives because of the relatively low cost of water compared to energy. However, Blackwell said: “Water will be the next thing that people will be really concerned about, despite fewer commercial drivers.”

All parties eagerly await what Defra will include in its water efficiency report that was due last year. It is expected to include PCC targets as well as labelling.