Water resources management plan

Our Water Resources Management Plan

We’re tasked with planning the future of our region’s water resources to ensure we can maintain essential supplies and protect the environment in times of drought. 

Water companies are required to prepare and maintain a Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP) on a five yearly cycle. 

The WRMP sets out how we plan to manage supply and demand for the next 25 years. It examines strategic issues that influence demand for water and water availability. It also sets out how we intend to maintain the balance between water supply and demand to ensure customers receive a continued reliable supply and to protect the environment.

Draft Water Resources Management Plan 2024 v2

We revised and restructured our first draft of our WRMP (v1) to take into account the feedback and comments we received during the public consultation in the Spring of 2023.

We published v2 of our WRMP at the beginning of October 2023 for a second public consultation. Please see below to view the updated v2 WRMP documents and our Statement of Response to the second consultation. 

Version 2 of the WRMP includes the non-technical, customer-facing summary, the WRMP Technical Report, 12 supporting Appendices and the updated WRMP Data Tables 4.

Statement of Response to the Public Consultation on the Draft Water Resources Management Plan 2024 v2

We held an 8-week public consultation on our draft WRMP v2 between 11 October and 06 December 2023. Our Statement of Response to the consultation feedback is now available to read. The Report summarises the 17 responses we received, and we set out in detail how we are responding to the comments and feedback in the Appendix.

We would like to thank everyone who found the time to respond. The consultation process is extremely important to us, and your feedback and comments will play a key part in developing our WRMP v3 which is to be published in 2024.

SWW dWRMP v2 Statement of Response

SWW dWRMP v2 SoR - Appendix

Our Statement of Response to the public consultation on version 1 of the WRMP is still available to read. It can be viewed below the section on our Environmental Assessment.

Statement of Response to the Public Consultation on the Draft Strategic Environmental Assessment

We held a public consultation on the SEA at the same time that we consulted on v1 of the WRMP. Our Statement of Response to the feedback from the consultation is below.

Statement of Response on SEA

Although we only consulted once on our SEA, some stakeholders provided further comments during the second WRMP consultation. Our responses to this second round of comments are published below as an addendum.

Addendum to the Statement of Response on SEA

Statement of Response to the Public Consultation on the Draft Water Resources Management Plan 2024

We held a 12-week public consultation on our draft Water Resources Management Plan (dWRMP) between 14 February and 09 May 2023. Our Statement of Response to the consultation feedback is now available to read. 

The Report summarises the 79 responses we received and how we are responding to these.

We would like to thank everyone who found the time to respond.

SWW dWRMP Statement of Response

Since publishing the revised WRMP and the SoR, we have conducted an internal review to check for errors and omissions. We have drawn together an Addendum to the SoR that we hope sets these out clearly. It should be read in conjunction with the Appendices below. 

Addendum to our Statement of Response (Nov 23)

There are two appendices to the report. The first sets out the material issues raised by each individual customer or organisations and shows how we will respond to each issue as we fully revise our WRMP in light of the feedback received.

The second appendix sets out the responses received on our Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and provides our responses to these. The responses to the SEA are primarily from Statutory Consultees in the regulatory processes.

SWW dWRMP Statement of Response - Appendices 1 + 2

All responses are equally important and will be fully taken into account in the revised version of our Plan. We will republish the revised dWRMP for a second consultation in early October this year. 

Water Resources Management Plan 2019

We reviewed our previous Water Resources Management Plan from 2014 and updated it to produce a new Draft Water Resources Management Plan, which we submitted to Defra in December 2017. Following permission being granted by Defra, the new Water Resources Management Plan was published for public consultation in March 2018.  After the public consultation period we prepared a Statement Of Response, which outlined the changes we made to the Plan in response to the comments we received.  In July 2019 Defra granted us permission to publish our final plan.

The Plan has been prepared in accordance with guidelines issued by the Environment Agency. We are a member of the West Country Water Resources Group and are working with other water companies regarding transfers between Water Companies. We are also working with the Environment Agency on proposals for the Lower Otter Restoration Project.

You can access our Final Plan below:

The technical Water Resources Management Plan tables are available on request to wtrstrat@southwestwater.co.uk

A paper copy of our Water Resources Management Plan can be viewed at our offices at Bournemouth Water and South West Water.

The published version of the Water Resources Management Plan is required to exclude any matters of commercial confidentiality and any material contrary to the interests of national security. There were no matters of commercial confidentiality. We have excluded information relating to the location of key assets on the advice of our certifier for emergency planning and in the interests of national security.

We are also required to publish tables and information for water resources markets. These are available on our Bioresources page.

You can also find out about our wider plans for 2020-25.