What does our water future look like?
It’s hard to imagine a future without water. It’s there when we go to make a cup of tea, brush our teeth or flush the loo. At Thames Water we supply around 2.6 billion litres of clean drinking water to around 10 million customers across London and the Thames Valley, each day.
But our water resources are under increasing pressure. We predict a shortfall of 1 billion litres of water per day by 2050 for our customers. Across England that figure increases to nearly 5 billion litres of water per day, with demand outstripping supply.
So, what is causing demand for water to outstrip supply? And more importantly, what can we do about it? These were questions I was able to pose to over 70 A-Level students at an Open Day hosted by Kingston University, where I also explained to them what Thames Water is doing to keep the taps flowing for future generations, and asked them how they would make sure there’s enough water to go around.
The challenges we face
During the session, I explained to the students that one of the main challenges all water companies face is the growing demand for water. In the last decade alone the number of customers Thames Water supplies water to has increased by 1 million and we forecast this to grow by around 3 million customers in the next 50 years. In simple terms we have more mouths to feed when it comes to providing a safe and secure supply of water.
Population growth isn’t the only thing affecting our water resources. As a result of climate change, we are experiencing more swings in our weather, from hotter, drier summers to wetter winters. The South East has been designated as water stressed and as recently as 2022 we experienced the driest July on record, with temperatures also reaching record-breaking highs of 40°C.
The long, dry period combined with unprecedented hot weather had a huge impact on our rivers and streams. We also saw demand for water soar and our own data shows customers with outdoor space use up to 50% more water on hot days (temperatures above 25c). We subsequently introduced a hosepipe ban.
The Environment Agency recently declared that England has experienced the driest start to Spring since 1956 and has warned that we should expect to see more summer droughts in the coming decades.
We have robust plans in place to manage drought. At present our reservoirs are healthy, but we continue to carefully monitor the situation as we move into summer. We will be supporting our customers to use water wisely, while continuing to tackle leakage across our network.
In addition, we need to protect the environment. That means reducing the amount of water we take from our rivers, chalk streams and groundwater sources.
What can we do about it?
Water is a precious resource and should be treated as such. That’s why we have a plan of action in place when it comes to securing our future water supply. And 80% of that plan, also known as our Water Resource Management Plan (approved by Government last year), involves halving leakage by 2050, installing smart water meters on every household and business connection to the network, and helping our customers to use water wisely.
Under our five-year business plan (2025 -2030) we’ve allocated £ 2.561bn to reduce leakage. We’re targeting our largest leaks, with an ambitious mains pipe replacement programme as we work to drive down leakage.
Another challenge is that around a third of leakage is located on customer and business pipes and properties, from dripping taps to leaky loos it all adds up. One in twenty homes has a leaky-loo and a single leaky toilet is wasting 200 - 400 litres of water each day on average, almost the same amount of water that an average family of four uses.
That’s where our smart meters come in. Over the last decade we’ve installed 1.2 million meters and have been at the forefront of introducing this technology to our customers' homes. The meters give us hourly consumption data, and we are currently gathering 25 million reads a day, helping us to locate customer side leaks quickly.
Over the next five years we plan to rollout more than a million meters. This will be vital as we support people to think about their water use and work towards to the Government's target of reducing individual water use to 110 litres of water each day – for context average water use for our customers currently sits at around 140 litres each day.
Bridging the water gap
While using water wisely and reducing leaks is essential, this alone isn’t enough. We need to build new water infrastructure. This is what underpins the other 20% of our plan.
It’s critical that we build somewhere to store water when it does rain. And that’s where our proposed new Oxfordshire reservoir comes in. The South East Strategic Reservoir Option (SESRO) would secure water supply for 15 million people, including Thames Water, Affinity Water and Southern Water customers.
During hotter periods it could provide enough water to fill 300 million baths each day and would act as an insurance policy against drought.
We also know that a severe drought could cost London’s economy as much as £500 million each day. That’s why we’re also progressing plans for the Teddington Direct Water Recycling project, which could supply Londoners with around 75 million litres of water each day.
This a vital drought resilience project would enable us to take more water from the River Thames during dry weather. We’d replenish the river with highly treated recycled water, protecting the environment and local wildlife in the process.
Inspiring the next generation
Having set the scene to the students in attendance, explaining the pressures our water resources are under and informing them of our planned infrastructure, we asked them to come up with their own ideas to protect future water supply.
Some of the ideas ranged from putting timers on showers and taps, creating challenges to get people to use less water and using new social media platforms to raise awareness around the pressures our water resources face.
Overall, I think it’s incredibly important to connect with young people on this journey. After all, it’s their water future that’s in everyone’s hands.
Andrew Tucker, Water Demand Reduction Manager at Thames Water.
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