Water Resources West - Final Regional Plan

12th June 2025

Water Resources West has launched it’s first ever regional plan. 

Ensuring the essential balance of water supply and demand is an important long-term focus for all those who depend on the water environment and water companies have always produced a long term plan for how to ensure they can cater for their customers. But there is now a much greater focus on the bigger picture with five regional groups, where water companies work with  other water users to consider the demands on the water sources in those areas.  Each region is producing a strategic regional plan to make sure the water resources in their catchment areas are sustainable.

And so, for the first time, we now have an aligned set of regional plans, and together, these plans provide a joined-up national picture of the challenge facing the country’s water supplies and how it should be addressed.

Regional planning has shown that planning at this scale is the optimal level of investment planning for water resources as it strikes the right balance between accounting for specific local factors with more strategic co-ordination.

We now have the ability to identify shared solutions and options that can benefit not only multiple water companies, but other companies and organisations too.  Regional plans have helped to make the case for major infrastructure projects, including a several nationally significant initiatives that will drive economic growth and environmental improvements. They also enable increased connectivity and greater flexibility in the potential for water transfers between regions

Alongside Water Resources West, two of the other four regional groups – Water Resources South East (WRSE) and Water Resources North (WReN) – will also launch their final regional plans.  Timing the release of plans together sends a unified message about the importance of long-term, collaborative water resources planning and marks the successful conclusion of the first round of regional planning driven by the National Framework for Water Resources.

The publication of these plans comes ahead of the imminent release of the Environment Agency’s next update to the National Framework. The revised Framework will provide an up-to-date assessment of the country’s future water needs and confirm requirements for the next set of regional plans.

Here are the documents that make up the Regional Plan: