We are committed to providing a high-quality, secure and reliable water supply to customers now and in the future.

We aim to achieve this in a way that is affordable and that takes into account the need to protect the environment.

At South Staffordshire Water, we’re committed to providing a high-quality and reliable water supply to customers.

To do this, we continually review and improve our water resource management to ensure long-term delivery of supplies.

Simply put, water resource management is the process of making sure we have enough water for everyone who needs it, while protecting the environment.

Every five years, we consult on and publish a long-term water resources management plan. This sets out how we’ll provide you with reliable and sustainable water supplies over the next 25 years.

We also work in partnership Water Resources West, which brings together a wide range of organisations to consider options for sustainable, long-term water supplies in our region.

The South Staffs Water region is classed as an ‘area of serious water stress’. Climate change and environmental abstraction reductions has resulted in reduced water availability. Combined with population growth, there is a projected water supply deficit of around 60 million litres per day by 2025.

South Staffs Water's Water Resources Management Plan 2024 has adopted a demand-led strategy, prioritising reducing water use before looking to develop new water sources.

Main demand reduction measures

Universal smart metering by 2030

Virtually all customers will have smart meters by 2035, a major enabler of behaviour change and leakage reduction. This is expected to deliver a saving of 15.2 million litres per day by 2050.

Leakage reduction

Our plans include reducing leakage from 73.6 million litres per day (2017/18 baseline) to 36.8 million litres per day by 2050. This includes active leak control, smart network monitoring, pressure management and customer supply pipe repair programmes. This is expected to deliver a saving of 22.7 million litres per day.

Household water efficiency

This will be achieved through a number of measures, including smart meter data and feedback, home visits and audits, innovative tariffs and housing associated programmes. By the end of 2026, mandatory water efficiency labelling for appliances and water-using products in the UK is also planned to come into force.

This is expected to deliver a saving of 40.2 million litres per day by 2050.

Non-household water efficiency

Our plan includes smart metering for businesses, water audits, leakage detection and partnerships with water retailers. This is expected to deliver a saving of 11 million litres per day.

Environmental protection

A major element of our Water Resources Management Plan is reducing water abstraction. We plan to reduce abstraction by around 48 million litres per day to support rivers, aquifers and protected habitats by 2040.

Priority catchments include:

• Worcestershire Middle Severn
• Cannock Chase
• Coalfield Heaths

Customer feedback

Consulting with customers about our Water Resources Management Plan is an important part of the process.

The strongest themes from customer research were:

Reliable water supplies

Affordable bills

Leakage reduction

Environmental protection

Support for vulnerable customers

Smart metering as a fair method of charging

Customers strongly preferred demand reduction over building new water infrastructure.

Drought resilience

South Staffs Water

• is already resilient to a 1-in-500-year drought, exceeding previous standards
• doesn’t require additional drought infrastructure
• can utilise existing assets, such as the River Blithe pumpback scheme, which provides significant resilience

Climate change

While climate change is expected to reduce available water resources, impacts are considered manageable. Our supply system remains robust under a range of climate scenarios and stress tests.

Our Water Resources Management Plan concludes that we can meet future water demand and our environmental obligations without building major new water supply infrastructure.

The demand management measures in our plan, such as universal smart metering, leakage reduction, water efficiency and environmental abstraction reductions, ensure we have resilient water resources for the future.