Ofwat opens £5m WEL2 customer-side leakage challenge

(by Karma Loveday)

Ofwat today opens the second round of its Water Efficiency Lab (WEL2) competition, which offers up to £5m (£1.5m per winner) for tools to tackle customer-side leakage.

The regulator explained that leaks in homes and businesses (from both internal plumbing and external supply pipes within property boundaries) account for 1-1.5bn litres of water a day – around a quarter of all water lost to leaks in England and Wales. This costs customers £1-1.6bn a year. In addition to the direct cost, ‘escape of water' claims cost UK insurers £1.25bn in 2024, with almost three quarters of that sum coming from household leaks.

The remaining three-quarters lost to leaks (almost 3bn litres a day) occurs in the mains network, where water companies have a 17% reduction target by 2030.

WEL2, which is part of Ofwat’s £100m Water Efficiency Fund, is seeking ideas to: 

• Prevent – Prevent leaks through better materials, accessible fixtures, or retrofit of durable components. 

• Predict – Use data or models to predict where and when a leak is likely to occur before failure happens. 

• Pinpoint – Identify the exact location of a suspected or confirmed leak – such as ‘second floor bathroom toilet’ rather than ‘somewhere in this property’. 

• Fix – Enable low-intervention, low-disruption or low-cost repairs, or simplify the repair journey from detection to completion. 

Applications open at 1pm today and close on 20 October 2026. For full details and to apply, visit waterinnovation.challenges.org