Water companies update their drought plans every five years. Our current plan covers the period to 2021. We published our draft Drought Plan 2022 for an 8 week consultation period in May 2021 and invited over 300 stakeholders to share their views with us.
As part of the public consultation we held a virtual stakeholder event which was attended by members of councils, flood action groups and customer challenge groups. The session gave us a chance to directly discuss our plan with stakeholders.
We closed the consultation at the end of June, and since then have been addressing the responses and updating the draft plan and technical appendices accordingly. 18 responses were received, covering over 60 issues, from a range of stakeholders such as councils, the National Farmers’ Union, Canal and River Trust, Lake District National Park, Natural England, customer challenge groups and more. The themes raised were varied, covering topics such as environmental issues, customer and stakeholder impact, communications and drought management actions.
We have now published our Statement of Response, a document that details the representations we have received during the consultation and our responses, including any changes we have made to the main document and the technical appendices. Alongside this we have published our revised draft Drought Plan 2022, amended HRA and SEA and revised technical appendices. These documents can be found on our webpage.
Defra and the Environment Agency will now review the revised draft and advise of any further work we need to do to the document. Once we receive approval we will publish our final drought plan.
Keep an eye on our web page or the Water Resources page on the Collaboration Portal for updates.