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, expectations of us as a Regional Group are understood and 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 encourage questions that are both:

• Strategic, for example: Where is the water for new data centres going to come from? Or can the level of Cambridge growth be accommodated, whilst also restoring flows in the important chalk streams?
• Business or locally specific, for example: Is there an alternative to reducing abstractions licence volumes in my catchment, so that we can retain access to water when needed?

We will look to respond to the questions asked through the publication of our Regional Water Resources Plan.   We may not be able to answer each question this planning round, but by gathering and collating your questions, it will give us direction and inform the questions that you would like asked of the Plan.  Where we are not able to answer questions directly through the Plan or as a Regional Group, we can also signpost to those who can, expose the questions for wider sight in the context of regional water resources planning or collaborate with partner organisations to answer.

Please review the questions below and add your own through completing the form 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.

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?
• How do we factor in land use change?   Sectors or industries, such as developers or agriculture have changing dynamics, even on a year-by-year basis. What year is used as the base year?  How do you factor in local plans etc?
• How are future water needs balanced both between and within sectors for water demand?  For example meeting the growth demands between both the livestock and horticulture industries?
• Regarding future growth scenarios, will the focus be just on the future use in local plans, such as supply for homes, data centres, industry, agriculture, or will you also consider development outside of the local plans (e.g. like the New Towns), the construction needs of these and the periods of time in which construction occurs?  The wider infrastructure needs to support housing/growth and their additional demand would be useful to be considered in planning.