Water Resource and Supply Resilience Plan 2024 Consultation

Overview

NI Water has now completed its draft Water Resource & Supply Resilience Plan (draft Plan) and is seeking your comments on the proposals. The draft Plan is an important document for NI Water, as it shows how the company will manage and develop water resources to make sure there is enough water to meet future supply needs.  The draft Plan takes into account changes in population, housing, water usage and incorporates any predicted changes to our climate.  This includes how water supplies would be maintained during critical periods such as severe winters, drought and includes a drought plan. 

NI Water has made significant changes in how the draft Plan was developed from the previous version which was launched in 2020. These include:

• A longer-term planning horizon from 25 to 50 years.
• Changing future weather patterns require increased resilience to more frequent and extreme events.  For example, this includes planning for more extreme drought events, typically what would be expected to occur once every 200 years.
• Increased focus on environmental sustainability in support of carbon Net Zero targets

The draft Plan aims to build on work on other areas, ensuring continued high levels of leakage detection, sustained investment in water mains and water efficiency initiatives.

A Strategic Environmental Assessment has also been developed for the draft Plan. This assessment looks at the potential impact of our draft Plan on the environment.

As part of the consultation process, we are seeking your views on the draft Plan and associated documents through the completion of an online survey. The survey, draft Plan and associated documents can be accessed below.

The consultation will run for nine weeks to 24 May 2024. The consultation responses will be reviewed by the Department for Infrastructure (DfI), prior to sending them to NI Water for comment.

NI Water devised the draft Plan with input from key stakeholders, including the Department for Infrastructure, the Utility Regulator, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, Northern Ireland Environment Agency and Consumer Council NI.  

Following the consultation period, once all the representations have been reviewed and addressed as appropriate, NI Water will publish a summary of the consultation responses and the Final Water Resource & Supply Resilience Plan.

The information you provide in your response to this consultation, unless deemed lawfully exempt and excluding personal information, may be published or disclosed in accordance with the disclosure provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) or the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR).

If you want the information that you provide to be treated as non-disclosable under the above information access legislation, please tell us why, but be aware that, we cannot guarantee non-disclosure.

For information regarding your personal data, please refer to the DfI Privacy Notice at https://www.infrastructure-ni.gov.uk/dfi-privacy. 

For further details on the release and exemption of information under the FOIA and the EIR, please refer to https://www.ico.org.uk

Why your views matter

NI Water exists to provide the water for life we all rely on to thrive. The Draft Plan provides an overview of the challenges facing your water supply and the actions NI Water plan to take to continue to resiliently meet the demand for water. We welcome feedback on the Draft Plan to ensure NI Water is investing in the right areas.

What happens next

The Department will collate and review all representations received for commercial confidentiality, before passing them to NI Water for consideration and comment. The Department will then consider NI Water’s comments and may direct NI Water, if required, to amend the Plan before publication of the final Plan.