Water needs a resilience standard for peak demand, NIC urges

The government should set out consistent standards for water companies to maintain resilience at times of peak water demand.

That was among the priority “resilience gaps” identified by the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) in a report published last week, which spanned the digital, telecoms, energy, transport and water sectors, as well as identifying interdependency and cascade failure risks, where a failure in one sector would lead to service failures in another. These resilience gaps are areas which currently lack consistent standards, hindering both customer visibility of expected service standards, and providers’ ability to plan and secure investment.

The independent expert advisory body pointed to four resilience gaps in the water sector that it recommended the government act on as a priority: 

• Peak demand: Government should consider a standard setting out the volume of water that water companies’ systems are required to be able to treat, store and put into supply over the course of a short peak demand period – as opposed to long term drought storage for which a standard already exists. 

• Single source of supply: Government should consider a standard on the number of consumers reliant on a single asset for supplying their water. 

• Forward looking asset health standard considering climate change related deterioration: The sector needs a forward looking asset health metric which assesses the likely remaining life of assets, and the probability of failure over time, to ensure that resilience is not threatened by a failure to invest in long term maintenance or to address future threats. 

• One in 50 year storm risk reduction target: Ofwat has guidance for companies on reporting on the percentage of customers at risk from a one in 50 year storm event – an event with a 2% annual probability. Government should consider setting a desired risk reduction target in line with the Commission’s recommendation for a single joint target for surface water flood risk reduction. The NIC set out a series of steps for Defra to take, to enable water resilience standards to be prepared in time to be factored in to PR29. 

It also made equivalent recommendations for other sectoral departments, and in terms of interdependency risks, for the Cabinet Office as the government body with overall responsibility for resilience.

National Infrastructure Commissioner, Professor Jim Hall, said: “With billions of pounds due to be spent over the next 20 years on new infrastructure to create a greener, more productive economy, the time is right for the government to set out its expectations of operators in the face of growing resilience threats.

“Failing to do so will cost us all more in the long run, as expensive emergency measures have to be introduced to address service failures that could have been avoided by planned investment.”