Rethinking Water Planning

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Why is the project relevant to you?

With new drainage and waste management plans, water companies must now plan for water resource, water quality, and flood risk. Although these plans are currently separate, ensuring that they work together or compliment each other will create efficiencies and benefits. This will allow you to understand the full impact of interventions early in the planning process. This project's methods, like integrated modelling and systems thinking, will help the water sector move towards a more integrated approach. Further development of these approaches will require support from water companies and those who create planning guidance.

Key messages for Water industry

The project shows that drainage and wastewater management plans, along with water resource management plans, offer the best opportunities for integration.

Call to action

We encourage you to show your colleagues how updating our approach to planning statutory water plans will help achieve environmental goals and improve efficiency.

Call to action

The tested approaches are designed to be flexible and iterative, allowing them to be used when any water plans are renewed. They can influence each statutory water plan during full renewals or annual reviews.

Call to action

The tested approaches used catchment-based analysis to guide decisions strategically. However, they are not meant to replace the specific modelling done in each sector. These approaches should complement and work alongside existing processes.

Call to action

Our conclusion is that having a single, unified plan isn't the best approach. Instead, we should focus on improving collaboration between different areas of the water sector and spatial planning.

Call to action

The project tested combining water resource, water quality, flood risk, and environmental plans. We recommend focusing on co-planning two plans at a time in the future.

Call to action