Keynote speech as Chair of the Cambridge Growth Company at the launch event on 17th June 2025 at the WWT London Wetland centre in Barnes

Thank you for the opportunity to speak this morning and to congratulate you on the launch of the updated National Framework for Water Resources.  Unlike most of you I am no water expert.    I am a consumer of a generation that was brought up not to regard water as a luxury.   As a child my parents would tell me to save energy by turning lights off as we left a room but water was regarded as almost free.   No worries if you left the sprinkler on all night!   

The world has now changed and 45 years after becoming a developer in some parts of the country water scarcity is a show stopper.   A constraint more difficult to overcome than planning – and that’s saying something.    My day job now is to enable enormous growth in the national interest in one of the areas of the country where the chalk aquifer is running dry.   So solving water problems is now an existential issue for me.

As chair of the Cambridge Growth Company, I am faced by both water scarcity and wastewater treatment capacity challenges. I am experiencing first hand why a new national framework is needed. Collectively we have failed to plan for this country’s growth potential and as a result risk losing inward investment, talent and jobs not just to the wetter north or west but to Boston, Berlin and Beijing.   We cant let that happen

When planning growth and development there are many things to consider: energy, transport and digital connectivity, labour and skills, materials, and the environment of course. Only very recently has water risen in importance to  the  top of the pile. And not just in Cambridgeshire, but widely across the eastern region and in the south east too; water to support economic growth is being severely rationed, and unless we take more action and urgently, we will continue to be in short supply until the mid-2030s.

Water companies must be at the heart of the solution, and in the eastern region they have made some welcome progress in addressing these issues. All three of the major water companies in the east  (Anglian Water, Essex & Suffolk, Cambridge Water) are amongst the best leakage performers on a per property basis. Essex & Suffolk Water has the lowest leakage in the country at 50.8 litres per property per day, 24% lower than 6 years ago. But that’s still the equivalent of half a person’s consumption per house wasted every day.   

Anglian Water now has more than 1 million smart meters installed in homes and businesses, transmitting hourly consumption readings each day across radio networks to their servers. These meters are telling them that more than 10% of homes have a continuous leak, likely to be a leaking dual-flush toilet. A single leaky loo can waste as much as 400 litres per day, equivalent to an extra three people living in your home. To help make everyone aware of leaks the entire Anglian Water region and all of Suffolk (by Essex & Suffolk Water) will be smart metered by 2030. But we need to go further to meet the needs of the region as we pursue growth and environmental goals.

So what needs to be done? The action needed at a local level in Cambridge mirrors what’s required across the country under this new National Framework:

  • We need to use water more efficiently. Existing homes and businesses need to be supported and encouraged to use less water to create headroom for growth. New homes need to be built to tighter standards, that are checked and enforced.
  • We need to store more water in the landscape. The Fens Reservoir is critical to the success of Cambridge in the long-term but won’t be into supply until 2036. We need to look again at options that could help in the short to medium term, which previously may have been dismissed as too complex, too expensive, too disruptive.
  • We need to share water between users and sectors. People have often called for a national water grid, and one of sorts is emerging step by step. The Fens Reservoir will serve both Anglian Water and Cambridge Water. Anglian Water’s Lincolnshire reservoir near Sleaford will be part-filled by a transfer from the River Trent, rising in the west. Cambridge in the medium term will be supplied indirectly by water pumped down the Grand Union Canal. Farmers and landowners are increasingly forming clusters to invest in shared water infrastructure, including potentially for the benefit of public water supplies.
  • We need to unlock alternative sources of water to reduce the pressure on the potable network. Treated effluent, mine water, rainwater harvesting, captured drainage water. We need to wean ourselves off using world-class drinking water for irrigating golf courses, flushing toilets and washing our cars where we can safely use less water

The fact that these options are now coming forward is a mark of the first National Framework’s success. Water companies, farmers and other sectors working much more closely together than in the past, with the regional water resources groups helping to catalyse and facilitate this cross-sector engagement.

At the Cambridge scale, under the leadership of Paul Leinster as chair of the Water Scarcity Group, good progress is being made by government, regulators, water companies and the planning authority working side-by-side:

  • Water companies’ water resources plans for the next five years have recently been agreed. On top of the positive leakage performance amongst companies in the East, Cambridge Water already has the lowest per capita household consumption in the country.
  • Government has provided £5 million to Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire District Council to fund water audits and retrofit measures to reduce consumption in existing homes and buildings. Simple measures installed by housing associations and in schools and other public buildings can very cost-effectively create headroom in the supply-demand balance.
  • Work continues by regulators and government to de-risk the Fens Reservoir and to support the delivery of the bulk transfer from Grafham Water to Cambridge. I understand these projects are being overseen by the Government’s new Ministerial Water Infrastructure Taskforce and welcome the recent designation of the Fens scheme as a NSIP, Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project. The long lead-in times for such schemes means we are encouraging water companies in our patch to think ahead now for the full range of options they will need to progress in order to accommodate the expansion I have been tasked with delivering.
  • The Government is funding Water Resources East to conduct large-scale trials of nature-based solutions in the Upper Cam, aimed specifically at creating more resilient baseflows in this chalk river catchment. If we can slow the flow and boost rates of aquifer recharge then we create a win-win for the environment and growth. And the Cambridge Growth Company  will continue to look to support such opportunities.

Responsibility for tackling water shortages does not rest with the water companies and regional groups alone. The other side of the equation is using the water resources available as efficiently and sustainably as possible, and that’s where I see a greater role for the development sector and the planning system and the policy framework we operate within. As my team at the Cambridge Growth Company starts work with local partners to support sustainable growth of the city, the questions we need to ask are:

  • Can we achieve reduced usage  levels in each home and commercial building? What would it take, for example, to get to 60 or 70 litres per person per day?
  • Can we introduce integrated water management systems within new development, such as rainwater harvesting, to reduce pressure on the network?
  • Can we do that in a way that other places can learn and follow quickly if we succeed?
  • Can we identify opportunities to bring wider benefits such as public amenity and space for nature as we pursue better water management?

Government policy accounts for a third of the demand management savings baked into WRE’s Regional Water Resources Plan for Eastern England – measures including:

  • requiring water efficiency labels for white goods
  • water efficiency standards in Building Regulations
  • updating regulations around rainwater harvesting and grey water reuse

Implementing these policies will mean my team at the Cambridge Growth Company, and our local partners, will be able to go further, faster in growing the Cambridge economy.

Addressing the water scarcity challenge also requires joined-up government and cross-sector working. Consider, for example, future demand for data centres. Getting the balance right – between growth, water resources and environmental impacts – is not easy and will probably require trade-offs to be made. That’s fine and it is part of the function of the planning process to balance such competing demands. But the planning process  can’t do it alone, and I see my role and that of the CGC as helping to bring partners together to find solutions – in the case of data centres, that might mean working with UK Power Networks, business and the water company to find sustainable solutions, and making the case back to government – DESNZ, DSIT, MHCLG – where regulatory or policy support is needed.

We should keep in sight the hard fact that the cost of water to businesses, if they can obtain it, is largely immaterial to the bottom line. In fact, water perversely  gets cheaper per cubic meter the more businesses use. This seems like an irrational way to manage a scarce resource. No wonder there has been next to no progress in reducing business consumption in recent years.

One suggestion that has been made to me is that water for non-domestic uses could be priced separately and become progressively more expensive than it is at present. What I refer to is water for ‘process’ use, such as for construction, manufacturing and industrial cooling. This would create the incentive for such businesses to use less and to make investing in alternative water sources and water efficiency technologies more financially viable.  The surplus income could be recycled into grants for businesses to install smart water  technologies. We have an Energy Company Obligation that mandates suppliers to help their customers to become more resource efficient, funded through energy bills. So why not a Water Company Obligation to do the same?

With so much that can be done to reduce water use, build new resources and create headroom for growth I am optimistic that we will resolve today’s shortages.. But we need to be proactive and creative to do so.   We can – and must – secure the growth our economy and communities need but at the same time work hard to protect and improve the natural environment. These twin aims can go hand-in-hand. Cambridgeshire is home to many iconic chalk rivers and sensitive water environments and action to restore these to good health must not be compromised.

But to achieve both growth and environmental recovery we need to think differently: bolder in policy terms, and better joined up, exemplified by the work of the Cambridge Water Scarcity Group. The Group’s work has demonstrated that having the right people in the room committed to finding answers can achieve significant things. Today with the leadership of Dr Paul Leinster and Daniel Johns we do have the right people in the room to make a difference.

Let Cambridge be an exemplar of sustainable water resources management, delivering water positive development for the benefit of both existing and new communities. Cambridge is the centre of UK innovation, the biosciences revolution, where the industries of tomorrow can thrive. It can also be where new approaches to water resources management are tested, refined and proven.

Water need not be a constraint on growth, but it will take all of us working together at national, regional and local levels to find the resources our communities, industries and the environment need.