Water Resources Planning

All water companies prepare Water Resources Management Plans (WRMPs) which show how they will secure resilient water supplies for their customers for the next 25 years. We consider how much water we have available today, how much we need to supply in the future and then develop options to make up any difference. These plans are updated every five years to make sure they always reflect the latest information, innovation and customer views.

In preparing this plan, we have collaborated with customers and stakeholders over the last two years about your water supplies and what’s important to you and these have been taken into account in this plan.

In summary, our latest Water Resource Management Plan aims to:

• Construct and fill Havant Thicket Reservoir by 2031 to supply water to our customers and free up supplies elsewhere to share with Southern Water in a drought
• Install smart water meters in most of the homes we supply and replace existing meters with smart ones by 2035 to encourage water saving, find leaks and introduce fairer bills
• Support everyone to reduce their water use to an average of 121 litres per person per day by 2050 (about 154 litres on average today) through community rewards, water-saving devices and home audits
• Halve leaks by 2040 and by a further one per cent every five years after
• Upgrade a water supply ‘booster’ station in West Sussex by 2033 so we can move water more easily to where it’s needed
• Increase our resilience so we can reduce the likelihood of emergency drought restrictions such as standpipes to once every 500 years on average after 2039 and stop using an emergency permit to take water during droughts

We published our draft Water Resources Management Plan in November 2022 for a consultation, which closed on February 20, 2023. The draft plan set out how we intend to secure reliable, healthy drinking water supplies for the next 50 years.

We have now produced our statement of response, which sets out how we have considered and acted upon the comments received from customers and stakeholders. The response can be found by clicking on the links below:

• Statement of Response
• Statement of Response Appendix C
• Statement of Response Appendix D
• April 2024 additional information requested by Defra

Our statement of response is supported by our Revised Draft Water Resources Management Plan 2024 and appendices. These can be found by clicking on the links below:

• Revised Draft Water Resources Management Plan main document
• Appendix 1B – DWSP assessment
• Appendix 1C Southern Water & Portsmouth Water Common Understanding
• Appendix 1D Strategic Environmental Assessment  (and summary)
• Appendix 1E Problem Characterisation
• Appendix 1H- 2022 Drought
• Appendix 3A Pre-consultation letter
• Appendix 3B Pre-consultation meeting dates and agendas
• Appendix 3C- Customer Priorities
• Appendix 4A Baseline Demand Forecast
• Appendix 4B- Portsmouth Water Non-Household Demand Forecast
• Appendix 4Ca Propulation and Properties method
• Appendix 4Cb Population and Properties Update
• Appendix 4D Portsmouth Water Non-Household Demand Forecast Update
• Appendix 5Aa – WRSE outage method statement
• Appendix 5A Outage
• Appendix 5C- WRSE Deployable Output Method
• Appendix 5B- Investigating and Achieving Sustainable Abstraction
• Appendix 5D WRSE method Stochastic Climate Datasets
• Appendix 5E Regional Simulation Model Scoping Report
• Appendix 6Aa Allowing for uncertainty
• Appendix 6Ab – Headroom Calculations
• Appendix 7A – Options
• Appendix 7C WRSE Defra Demand Saving Profile Technical Note (Gov led intervention)
• Appendix 7E- Carbon
• Appendix 7F Hampshire Water Transfer and Water Recycling Project Consultation Response Appendix
• Appendix 7G- WRSE Options Appraisal Summary Report
• Appendix 8A Investment Programme Development and Assessment
• Appendix 8B- Method Statement Best Value Plan
• Appendix 9A Sensitivity Testing
• Appendix 10A- Monitoring Plan
• Appendix 10B- Water Efficiency Strategy
• Appendix 10C Leakage Strategy
• Appendix 11A- Technical Assurance Report
• Appendix 11B Steering Group Terms of Reference
• Water Resources Planning Tables 2024

We published our draft Water Resources Management Plan in November 2022 for a consultation, which closed on February 20, 2023. The draft plan set out how we intend to secure reliable, healthy drinking water supplies for the next 50 years.

You can read our summary and technical documents below. We’re grateful for all the feedback we received. We’re reviewing this and we’ll publish a summary and any changes to our plan later this year.

• Water Resources Management Plan Summary document (online viewing)
• Water Resources Management Plan Summary document (printable)
• Water Resources Management Plan main document
• Appendix 1B Drinking Water Safety Plan Assessment
• Appendix 1D Strategic Environmental Assessment (and summary)
• Appendix 1E Problem Characterisation
• Appendix 3A Pre-consultation
• Appendix 3B Pre-consultation Meetings
• Appendix 3C Customer Insight
• Appendix 4A Baseline Demand
• Appendix 5A Outage
• Appendix 6A Headroom
• Appendix 7A Options
• Appendix 7C Government-led Savings
• Appendix 9A Sensitivity Tests
• Appendix 11A Assurance
• Appendix 11B Steering Group Terms of Reference
• WRMP Tables
• Compliance Statement

On 1 April 2022 Defra confirmed we can now publish our Final Drought Plan 2022.

Legislation requires water companies to prepare and maintain a Drought Plan. Our Drought Plan is an operational plan that sets out the measures that we will take so that we are able to continue to maintain supplies of wholesome water to our customers with as little recourse as possible to Drought Orders and/or Drought Permits. The purpose of a Drought Plan is to set out the timely actions that a water company will take to ensure continuity of supply whilst at the same time continuing to protect the environment.

To view a copy of the Final Drought Plan 2022 please click here.

To view a copy of the appendices please click here.

We updated our Drought Plan and published a draft for consultation from June to August 2021. We’ve now reviewed the responses and published a Statement of Response which sets out the feedback and shows how we’ve updated our plans as a result.

The Statement of Response and consultation documents are available below:

• Statement of Response
• Statement of Response appendices
• Revised Draft Drought Plan
• Revised Appendix C: Testing our triggers
• Revised Appendix E: Temporary Use Ban and Non-Essential Use Bans – additional information

To view a copy of the Draft Drought plan 2021 please click here.

To view a copy of the appendices please click here (.zip file).

Our Final WRMP19 shows how we will secure resilient water supplies to our customers for the next 25 years by considering how much water we have available today, how much we need to supply in the future and then what investment options are required to make up any difference.

Our previous Annual Review of the WRMP19, highlighted that in 2019-20 we had over performed in certain areas (leakage), but underperformed in others (PCC and the delivery of proposed groundwater schemes in 2019). We have therefore revised our WRMP19 so that we fully understand what our performance has meant in terms of our supply-demand balance for a range of scenarios all the way up to a 1in 200 year drought event. This is necessary in order to investigate whether there would be a security of supply risk to our customers during any of these drought events, and to the water we transfer to Southern during more extreme droughts.

The updated supply-demand balances demonstrate that we are no longer meeting our target headroom in a 1 in 200 year drought event, for the reasons highlighted in our previous Annual Review. This means there is an increased risk of us needing to implement severe demand restrictions in an extreme drought.

We have been working with the Environment Agency in the development of this Revised WRMP19, and will continue to do so as we progress through AMP7. This will include reviewing the most up-to-date data and knowledge that emerges during the development of the Water Resources in the South East (WRSE) regional plan and our WRMP24.

If you would like to know more about our Revised WRMP19, please contact us via [email protected]

Documents

Portsmouth Water Revised WRMP19 report

Revised WRMP Tables – 1 in 200 year

On 4 November 2019 Defra confirmed we can now publish our Water Resources Management Plan, which says how we will secure your drinking water for the next 25 years.

All water companies prepare Water Resources Management Plans (WRMPs) which show how they will secure resilient water supplies for their customers for the next 25 years. We consider how much water we have available today, how much we need to supply in the future and then develop options to make up any difference.

These plans are updated every five years to make sure they always reflect the latest information, innovation and customer views.

In preparing our plan we held conversations with customers and stakeholders over the last two years about your water supplies and what’s important to you and these have been taken into account in this plan.

We also have a Customer Challenge Group which has reviewed our work to engage with you and making sure your views are incorporated into all our future plans.

Here’s a quick summary of this plan:

• This plan caters for growth and is part of a solution to supply other areas of the South East where there’s less water
• We will do this by building a new reservoir at Havant Thicket – to store water, create a nature reserve and provide community facilities
• We’re planning for more extreme droughts than we’ve known before – so we’re ready for climate change
• We want to save water by reducing leaks by 20% over the next five years
• We want to involve you in saving water with water meters, water-saving products and community campaigns
• We have an ambitious target of reducing our domestic use to 100 litres per day by 2040.

In March 2018 we consulted on our Draft Water Resources Management Plan.

All your responses were shared with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and were considered by us when we develop this final Water Resources Management Plan.

We also produced our statement of response in which we have taken into account all the comments we have received from customers and stakeholders.

All of the detail of our Draft Water Resources Management can be found here.

We now publish our Final Water Resources Management Plan for the period 2020 – 2045.

CLICK HERE

To view a copy of our response to Defra’s review of our Annual Review for 2024, please click here
To view a copy of Defra’s review of our Annual Review for 2024, please click here
To view a copy of the Annual Review for 2024, please click here

To view a copy of the Annual Review for 2023, please click here
To view a copy of the Annual Review for 2022 (updated Dec 2022), please click here
To view a copy of the Annual Review for 2022, please click here
To view a copy of the Annual Review for 2021, please click here
To view a copy of the Annual Review for 2020, please click here
To view a copy of the Annual Review for 2019, please click here
To view a copy of the Annual Review for 2018, please click here
To view a copy of the Annual Review for 2017, please click here
To view a copy of the Annual Review for 2016, please click here