• WRE, through its work to write the Regional Plan and to plan for achieving the environmental destination ambitions, looks to secure a sustainable long-term supply of water for all sectors.

    To achieve this ambition, the Regional Plan brings together several datasets to inform the future demand and supply of water.  When analysing this information, to ensure a resilient and sustainable supply for water abstractors, users and the environment, a number of key questions are asked.

  • These questions might relate to the long-term sustainability of supply, the costs to implement new options, the impacts on abstractors from changes and more.

    Through our Second Regional Plan, due to be published in 2029, we are keen to ensure that questions from all sectors and stakeholders are captured, so that the Plan and surrounding work can aim to answer these questions.

  • Questions can be answered in a number of ways, from our water resource modelling, forecasting and optioneering work, to using different costs and impacts in our metrics.

    Questions have already started to come forward through our stakeholder engagement and wider work – these have been captured below.  We are keen to understand the questions that you would like to pose, which could be answered through our water resource planning.

  • We will look to respond to the questions asked through the publication of our Regional Water Resources Plan.   We may not be able to fully answer each question, but by gathering and collating your questions, it will give us direction and inform the questions that you would like asked of the Plan.

    Please review the questions below and add your own through completing the survey via the link at the bottom of this page.

    We look forward to developing a collaborative Regional Plan that delivers a sustainable future supply of water across the region.

‘Big Questions’

The questions included below are examples of those that have been collated from stakeholder engagement activities and planning.  The questions are not limited to those below and indeed, many of the questions sit in multiple sections.

Abstraction licence changes

Under scenarios, such as through environmental destination, can analysis be done to minimise abstraction reductions, for example:

  • How minimal can we make abstraction reductions, through using a combination of options to meet the required environmental improvements?
  • Can WRE model no licence reductions for agriculture / industry / energy / amenity?
  • Can WRE model the impact of licence reductions back to recent actual abstraction rather than fully licenced for agriculture / industry / energy / amenity / public water supply?

How are you measuring and displaying the significant impacts on abstractors and sectors from future abstraction licence reductions, e.g. the impact on food security from agriculture or community impacts from industry/amenity changes?

New water supply options

  • How are you ensuring that available water is captured and used, e.g. high flow river water or pumped water from IDB areas?
  • How can I feed in a new idea for a solution to help with future water resources?

New water demand

  • Have we got enough water for new data centres in the region?
  • Should new data centres be located in a specific place in the region?
  • Where does the water come from for the new housing developments being proposed?

Reducing demand

  • Shouldn’t we all just be using less water or incentivised to do so?
  • What education programmes are in place for consumers and water users on water efficiency?  Can these be increased?
  • How far can we reduce water company leakage?
  • Can all new building developments have grey water recycling built into them as standard?

Environmental protection

How is the water environment being protected and improved through regional water resource planning?

Wider considerations

  • How is water quality taken into account for water resource planning, eg. nitrates in rivers, salinity of the Fens or PFAS?
  • Where is the funding going to come from for investment in new supply options for agriculture, industry and amenity sectors to ensure their resilience, e.g. storage reservoirs or rainwater harvesting?

Environmental destination

There are some questions that we can ask specifically by using the Environment Agency’s SACO (Sustainable Abstraction Calculator and Optimiser) tool through environmental destination.  These include, but are not limited to:

  • Adjusting Abstraction Sensitivity Bands (ASBs) based on local evidence
  • Adjusting or relocating water recycling centre discharges
  • Exclude specific sectors from abstraction reduction changes
  • Changing abstraction timings or locations, for example moving abstractions downstream or moving abstractions from summer to winter
  • Adding additional abstraction protections, for example new surface water hands off flows.
  • Change targets for waterbodies based on improved evidence for RNAG (Reasons for not achieving good), for example where evidence shows flow has not been confirmed to be a certain issue

Exclude abstraction licences from change, where the flow benefit ratio is low, except for areas with groundwater dependent terrestrial ecosystems

Your questions are welcomed

Do you have a question that you would like adding to the list?   We welcome all submissions by completing the short form available here:

‘Big questions’ for water resource planning – Fill in form

We will look to publish the responses to your ‘big questions’ as part of the publication of our Second Regional Water Resources Plan.