At the same time, we have to make sure the bills our customers pay remain affordable, and that we continue to ensure the long-term resilience of our water services to meet these challenges.
Our strategies and plans
Looking to the future
We're looking to the future and preparing our business plan for 2025 to 2030. This sets out the investments we have planned, over the next five years, to deliver the services and improvements to our environment you expect - at a price your household or business can afford to pay.
We have a long history of delivering clean water services to customers across our socially and geographically diverse South Staffs and Cambridge regions. We are a successful, privately owned, water-only company that provides an essential public service, and our customers trust us to always do this in a way that is both efficient and that offers best value.
Our small size, relative to most of the other companies in the England and Wales water sector, and our strong local focus means we are embedded at the heart of the communities we serve, and always strive to deliver the services that are important to our customers. This includes working hard to protect and enhance the environment that we all rely on and enjoy.
Business Plan
Click here to read our business plan for 2025 to 2030
Long-term Delivery Strategy
Click here to read our long-term delivery strategy for 2025-2050
This includes working hard to protect and enhance the environment that we all rely on and enjoy. To view the additional documents submitted to Ofwat with our business plan, please follow this link.
Latest information on our PR24 business plan
Since submission of our PR24 business plan to Ofwat in October 2023, we have made changes to parts of our plan. These have been in response to requests from Ofwat or other regulators and to clarify some points in our original plan. The result of these changes to date is that Ofwat are now considering a PR24 business plan for South Staffs Water that includes total expenditure of £817.4 million (down from £818.6 million in our October 2023 plan), and average annual customer bills of £181.18 by 2030 (down from £181.52 in our October 2023 plan). Ofwat's draft determinations will be based on this expenditure and these bills.
The reason for the change to our total expenditure for PR24 and associated average annual customer bills is because of the removal of some costs in our plan that were double counted (totalling £2.2m). This is partly offset against an increase to our draft Water Resources Management Plans for both Cambridge Water and South Staffs Water following feedback from Defra (costing £1.0m). This additional investment will help to ensure that we can meet future water resource challenges.
Delivering for our customersMaking sure we deliver our customers’ priorities and preferences is central to everything we do. We use a wide range of tailored engagement approaches to help us understand their needs – including those of future customers, those who may find themselves in vulnerable circumstances or who have been traditionally hard to reach, and our non-household and business customers. Across the business, we also engage regularly with a wide range of stakeholders, including customer advocacy groups, environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs), supply partners, local and national government officials, and regulators. We carefully evaluate all the insights we gain from our customers and other stakeholders to help us make the best possible decisions and shape our plans.
As a long-term business, we are always planning for the future using a range of different scenarios. This enables us to adapt quickly to changing circumstances. We have set our business plan for the five years from 2025 to 2030 within this long-term context, ensuring we can always deliver the right investment in the right way, at the right time – and in a way that represents the best value. This is how we will secure the long-term water future for our customers, our communities and the environment.
Innovation is key to success
We have traditionally been at the forefront of the water sector in terms of efficiency and delivering value for our customers. We want to make sure we always spend our customers’ money wisely and see innovation as critical to enabling us to continue doing more for less now and in the future. Key to this is creating a culture of innovation as an essential part of our business as usual activities, including sourcing funds from innovation competitions and other third parties. We consider this will help us to drive improvements in the services our customers have told us they want and are willing to pay for.
Looking ahead, we want to be a sustainable, net zero carbon business that always delivers value for money for customers, and long-term value for society and the environment. This means generating positive impacts for local communities, while also working in partnership with others to ensure we leave the environment in a better state for future generations. And it means leading by example to ensure social and environmental factors are at the heart of all our decision-making.
Our commitment to our customers
We are committed to delivering the best business plan for our customers, the environment and our business. This means continuing to invest in sector-leading assets to enable us to continue delivering high-quality water and excellent service to customers now and in the future. But we face a number of challenges that mean it is more important than ever for us to adopt a long-term adaptive planning strategy:
