This act has little relevance for members who are licensed to abstract their own water and does not seek to address the major abstraction reform that Defra consulted us on in early 2014; another new act will be needed to deliver those reforms.
However, the new Act will be of interest to members who are business customers of mains water companies because it means that, for the first time, businesses, charities and public sector customers will have the freedom to switch supplier from 2017.
This is an interesting development, and the NFU has already met with organisations such as the Consumer Council for Water to understand how farmers and growers will be best able to take advantage of this new opportunity in the years ahead.
Whilst the Act is mainly focused on mains supply, Clause 12 may be of some long term interest to members because it seeks to allow owners of small-scale water storage to sell excess water into the public supply.
In the wake of drought conditions during 2010-12, the NFU has been engaged in more regular dialogue with some of the public supply companies – particularly those in the South East and East of England – and a range of ideas are being discussed for multi-sectoral solutions to long term water management issues.
Clause 12 could play a small but useful part in those discussions.
What does government want the Act to do?
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Reform the public supply sector to make it more innovative and responsive to customers and to increase the resilience of water supplies to natural hazards such as drought and floods. - Bring forward measures to address the availability and affordability of insurance for those households at high flood risk and ensure a smooth transition to the free market over the longer term.
- Address growing pressure on water resources by making public supply more resilient;
- Help join up the national water network, by making it easier for water companies to buy and sell water from each other;
- Increase competition and encourage new entrants to the market who can offer alternative sources of water or innovative ways of treating sewerage; and
- Ensure that hundreds of thousands of households in the highest flood risk areas will be able to access affordable flood insurance from 2015.