DWMP explained

The first step in the development of a DWMP establishes the partnership-working principle. We also needed to define the scope of the shared plan and how to measure it.

Our first DWMP focuses on the impact of population growth and climate change across our region. It’s led by 12 planning objectives, six common across the water industry and six designed specifically for our region. We chose these objectives through consulting with our partners and incorporating their views.

We worked with stakeholders from over 70 organisations, institutions and groups at a local, regional and national level. We produced summary documents to drive the consultation and summarise the responses.

This stage is a high-level screening process. It looks at the performance of over 350 areas that drain to sewage treatment works. These areas are known as drainage and wastewater catchments.

We reviewed 17 different aspects, including flooding, pollution and permit compliance for each area. This helped us to understand whether the catchment was likely to be at risk in the future. Only catchments at risk progress to Stage 3 of the development process for long-term planning. 

We worked with stakeholders to capture the risks throughout this stage. Every five years, we’ll redo this screening process to make sure we capture new and emerging risks and any changes to our future predictions.

Access our Customer portal to see how we reviewed your catchment.

This is the more detailed risk assessment stage within the DWMP development process. BRAVA helps us to understand the level of risk to our wastewater service over time.

It focuses on the catchments that progressed from the RBCS stage. For each catchment, we modelled their predicted performance in 2030, 2035 and 2050. 

Access our Customer portal to see the performance of our region over time and the catchments that progressed to the next stage.

The ODA stage develops a set of ‘best value’ solution options for the most at-risk catchments in our region. Best value means including broader factors for us to consider and measure within our DWMP. These include wellbeing, biodiversity and carbon impact. 

We worked with our customers and stakeholders throughout this stage. We discussed the possible options with them, to understand which they preferred. We then used our local knowledge and the results from Stage 2 to select the potential options most likely to address the risks for each catchment.

Stakeholders reviewed the options. Once agreed we wrote them up in more detail.

Access our Customer portal to learn more about our work during this stage.

The final stage looks at the costs and benefits of the solution options. We developed 14 criteria to assess the options. We carried out customer research and developed a decision support tool. This helped us select the options that deliver the best value for our customers and the environment.

Through programme appraisal, we had discussions with our partners and customers. Together with the consultation feedback we received on our draft plan, this helped us to co-create a plan that meets the needs of everyone. It also meets recent regulatory requirements and maintains bill affordability. At the same time, our shared plan aligns with wider industry strategic plans and delivery programmes. These include the:

• Water Industry National Environment Programme (WINEP)
• Long-Term Delivery Strategy (LTDS)