Developing strategic water resource solutions

The Regulators’ Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Development (RAPID) was set up in 2019. It is a partnership made up of the three water regulators in England – Ofwat, the Environment Agency (EA) and the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI).

The predicted shift to hotter drier summers and warmer wetter winters will affect overall water availability. Whilst water shortages are forecast to be most acute in the south and south east of England, widespread severe drought is a nationwide risk that needs to be managed.

PR19 funding

At PR19, Ofwat announced a £469 million ring-fenced development fund for water companies to investigate and develop strategic water resource solutions to help improve water availability across England and Wales. This funding provides companies with the ability to develop the solutions so that they are ‘construction ready’ for the 2025-2030 period.

RAPID was formed to help facilitate the development and funding of these new large scale strategic water supply solutions. Each of the strategic solutions will pass through a gated process where decisions are made on delivery penalties and solution progression.

The gated process ensures that companies complete the activities expected in order to receive the additional funding. The process allows for cross-comparison of the solutions at regular intervals to identify the best opportunities for optimum results. 

The purpose of the gated process is to ensure at each gate that:​

• companies are progressing strategic water resource solutions that have been allocated funding at PR19;​
• costs incurred in doing so are efficient; and​
• solutions merit continued investigation and development during the period 2020 to 2025.  ​

 There are two tracks to the gated process:

• Standard gates; these timings align with other water resource planning processes.
• Accelerated gates; Southern Water’s need for large scale water resources occurs earlier than for other companies – due to the increased need for water in the South East of England.

The accelerated gate one final decisions were published in January 2021 and these solutions will be going through the accelerated gate two process starting in September 2021.

RAPID’s role in the gated process (working with the partner regulators and Natural Resources Wales) is to assess the progress made in development of each solution and to provide advice and recommendations to enable Ofwat to make decisions on continued funding for progression of the solutions.

The following decisions will be made at gate one:

• whether solution and options within it should progress to gate two;
• applying incentives and allowing costs;
• whether alternative and/ or additional solutions should enter the process; and
• what is required for gate two submissions.