Enabling Water Smart Communities

Enabling Water Smart Communities

Led by:  Anglian Water

Partners:  Thames Water, United Utilities, Arup, University of Manchester, University of East Anglia, Anglian Centre for Water Studies, Community Land Trust Network, Centre for Local Economic Strategies, Dark Matter Labs, KWR, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Clarion Housing Group, Future Homes Hub, Taylor Wimpey, Thakeham Group, Suffolk County Council, Cambridge Water, Dwr Cymru Welsh Water, Severn Trent Water, Southern Water

See project updates on the Enabling Water Smart Communities website or LinkedIn page.

There remain significant challenges to customers, communities and the environment from frequent flood events, sustained droughts and impacts on water quality.

Housing development in its current form and rapid growth will further augment these challenges, increasing demand on water and wastewater services to an unsustainable position

Integrated Water Management (IWM) provides a solution by combining infrastructure, technologies, policies, and behaviour change initiatives to improve lives through co-ordinated water management.

IWM is rarely delivered due to ongoing stewardship issues, static regulatory and policy standards and lack of affordability.

This project will take an innovative approach to tackling these by:

• Rethinking assets: Develop and test innovative IWM design and asset management to support new stewardship models;
• Rethinking roles: Challenge regulatory and policy standards to support stakeholders;
• Rethinking value: Understand stakeholder motivations to develop financial models to unlock new sources of investment, and realign existing sources, to deliver affordable IWM.

This quarter has seen a step change in progress and delivery. We have:

• Updated our governance operating model to ensure the right level of control, reducing the potential for a bottle necks for decision making.
• Developed and implemented technical steering groups for our enabling action projects, allowing faster industry wide challenge and feedback on deliverables, as well as dissemination outside of the immediate project team.
• Kicked off our tranche 1 enabling action projects (looking to deliver innovation to take 10 out of 65 enabling actions needed to support delivery of water smart communities) including onboarding of partners and third parties.
• Undertaken an initial review of the original 65 enabling actions (identified through our discovery phase) and bid outcomes to identify additional areas for development. As a result tranche 2 enabling action workstreams have been identified and are being scoped into projects.
• New engagement plan developed to ensure our Independent Programme Board are kept updated. –
• Continuation of academic workstreams completing workshops, interviews and case studies around community engagement and practices with WSC’s.
• Set up the monitoring and evaluation workstream to review and monitor project outputs against bid outcomes.
• Developed a Transition Strategy looking to ensure longevity of the project outcomes beyond its end date.

“This project is urgently needed to bring together the wide range of development partners to identify and break down barriers to integrated water management. It is essential that we come together at a time when water demand is only going to continue through both growth and climate change; to demonstrate a replicable approach for future sustainable development.”

– George Warren, Integrated Water Management Lead, Anglian Water

All images courtesy of Eddington Development.