The Housing Forum was pleased to respond to Ofwat’s consultation on changes to their charging rules in the form of a common framework for water companies to offer stronger and more standardised environmental incentives to developers to encourage them to build new homes that are more water efficient and with sustainable drainage.
The current pattern of environmental incentives for water-efficiency and sustainable drainage is patchy and a clearer and more consistent framework would be helpful. Overall, we support the proposed development of a common framework for water companies to offer stronger and more standardised environmental incentives to encourage the development of new homes that are more water efficient and with sustainable drainage. In our response we outline the principles that support effective environmental incentives and the details of the proposed incentive structure.
This should form part of a wider package of measures to ensure that there is sufficient water to support the development of new housing where it is required to support our growing population. Water shortages are currently a big problem across many parts of the country and newbuild housing is bearing the brunt of this. Whilst we support incentives to encourage reduced water usage and sustainable drainage, it is not realistic nor fair to expect new housebuilding to fully-fund the water-saving measures or investment in new water infrastructure that is required to meet the needs of a growing population. It is therefore essential that Ofwat and the Government invest across all water users to incentivise lower usage, regulate against higher usage where feasible and invest in infrastructure to ensure that there is capacity to support housebuilding in areas where new housing is needed.
You can read our response in full hereDate:
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