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Water UK confirms delay to national sewer overflow map

The creation of a national sewer overflow map has been delayed until the autumn, Water UK has confirmed.

The launch of the National Environment Hub – originally slated to go live this spring – has been pushed back until September, Water UK head of rivers and seas Leila Swan said.

Swan added that the launch date has been extended to allow additional time to review feedback from water companies’ regional event duration monitoring (EDM) maps, most of which went live in April this year.

Speaking at Utility Week’s Pollution Prevention, Management & Response Conference, Swan added that Water UK “wanted to take a pause after the regional EDM maps went live”.

“The companies have put a lot of effort in to publishing those [maps] and we received different feedback, some positive and some construction,” Swan said.

“We wanted to make sure that anything we put together in the hub would provide a value-add on top of the regional maps and that exercise has been the cause of a bit of a delay.”

All wastewater companies were required to install EDMs to provide near-real time data for the first time on combined sewer overflows (CSOs) by the end of 2023. Information from these will be collated for the first time in the National Environment Hub.

Swan confirmed that the hub will also include contextual information “to give industry the chance to explain the situation in alignment with the data”. She said this is “the most important” role that the hub will play.

Contextual information could be an explanation for why a spill has occurred or explanations around ground water infiltration, Swan added.

“What we’re trying to do with this national data hub is provide near real-time data and contextual information to our customers and to the public so that they can turn that knowledge into wisdom and make informed decisions,” Swan said.

The idea of a national overflow map was first pledged by the trade body when it issued its apology on behalf of the water sector in May 2023.

When challenged on the timing of the apology – in relation to the publication of the National Environment Hub – Swan stood by Water UK’s decision.

“I think the apology was an important message to our customers about our commitment to providing a service to them in the best way that we possibly can,” Swan said.

“The hub is going one step further, so publishing the hub a year ago would have put one thing before the other and I think it has been a building process […] and we wanted to make sure anything we put out was the best it could be for our customers.”

Swan added that once the hub goes live, Water UK will continue to look for ways to expand its remit. This could include feeding in data from continuous river quality monitoring, Swan said as an example.