How we plan for the future
Introduction
All water companies in the South East are working together with the Environment Agency to decide the most sustainable options to provide the water needed to meet future demand.
South East Water's draft Water Resource Management Plan takes into account factors such as housing growth, increased water usage and climate change. We need to plan so far in advance because large scale new resources, such as reservoirs, can take 10 to 15 years to plan, gain permission for and deliver.
This plan shows that by 2035 we will need up to an extra 90 million litres of available water every day to meet demand.
While water efficiency measures will go some way towards conserving this precious resource, on their own they will simply not be enough to ensure a secure supply of water for generations to come.
We maintain that unless some new water resources are built there will not be enough water available from existing sources to meet demand. That’s why our plan looks at three key ways of making water available:
- Making better use of existing resources
- Managing customers' demand for water
- Developing new resources
Our consultation
The latest stage of this water planning process has seen South East Water publish its responses to the 189 separate representations made by either customers or statutory consultees on our draft Water Resource Management Plan.
Click here to see the full summary of representations made and our response.
Click here to see the appendices which support out formal response.
Prior to this, we carried out two phases of consultation to explain the process of developing our draft Water Resource Management Plan. For further information see Stage One and Stage Two.