Back in 2015, we published our Water Resources Strategy 2015. The strategy set out our work plan over the following five years (2015 – 2020) and looked as far ahead as 2050 to understand and respond to the longer-term pressures and challenges on our future water resources.
Within the strategy we set out 14 Strategic Actions, which we aim to complete within the following five years. Here's some of the work we've been focusing on to progress these over the past year:
- we've continued to produce and contribute to water resource assessments for proposed restorations and new canal developments to ensure there is no net impact on the level of service of our network
- we've continued work on developing new water resource models (using specialised industry-standard software called Aquator) to replace our current water resources model, as this is now reaching the end of its functional life
- we continue to use the most up-to-date information available to assess the following future pressures on our water resources: climate change, changes in funding, environmental legislation (likely reduction in abstraction volumes) and increased network usage
In the 2015 Water Resources Strategy, we identified the Water Act 2003 as a significant pressure with the potential to reduce our water availability in the future. If you would like to read more about this, please read our blog: Water Act 2003 – Update
Read our full Water Resources Strategy Annual Update 2017 for further information. This is our second annual update since the publication of our strategy.
If you would like to read about our previous progress, please see our Water Resources Strategy Annual Update 2016.
