Update on Wessex Water’s 2025-30 business plan

Today (28 August) we are publishing our response to Ofwat’s draft determination. This is the next step in Ofwat’s five-yearly price review process.

At draft determination, Ofwat challenged our plan and proposed that bills should reduce by 2% over the five-year period. Our response reiterates the need for significant investment, much of which is to meet obligations set by regulators, and if approved will see bills rise by 29% over the next five years, incrementally – not in one go.

Next year’s bills will increase by approximately 9% and, in real terms, bills will still be lower in 2030 than in 2010. Our plan does not include any investment that has already been funded and we are not asking customers to pay twice.

However, for any customers who struggle to pay we will continue to offer a range of low-rate tariffs and plan to grow the total numbers we support. We believe nobody should spend more than 5% of their disposable household income on their water bill and are committed to eradicating water poverty by 2030.
Record investment

Our plan proposes £3.65 billion of new investment to upgrade infrastructure, protect the environment, safeguard future water supplies and create local jobs, including:

• £1.13bn invested to improve water quality by removal of 1,550 tonnes of nutrients in our waterways
• £445m to reduce the operation of storm overflows. This is more than double the £3m a month we are currently spending
• Innovative use of sewer monitors to predict problems in the network, real-time water quality monitoring for bathing waters and nature-based treatment solutions including floating reedbeds
• The doubling of investment will create an additional 700 jobs at Wessex Water, with thousands more in the supply chain

Read the full details of our response. Ofwat will now review our revised plan and make a final decision no earlier than December.