Enabling Water Smart Communities

Enabling Water Smart Communities (EWSC) is an innovation project exploring the relationship between integrated water management, community engagement and practices and housing development to unlock new opportunities for cross-sector delivery and stewardship.

Why do we need water smart communities?

Water smart communities are essential to delivery housing in England and Wales as they can reduce pressure on water resources, flood risk and water pollution. Without them, we cannot build the sustainable and affordable homes we need or deliver on green growth ambitions.

But this requires a new approach that embraces interdependencies, addresses shared risks and opportunities, and designs new ways to deliver and steward assets.

Learn more about WSC

Water challenges are housing challenges too

Today there are an increased number of challenges in which both water and housing sector have a stake. As water and housing sector challenges are becoming increasingly intertwined, so does the responsibility of managing these risks collectively.

Cross-sector collaboration allows us to use differences as a catalyst to design robust and sustainable solutions in partnership with the communities most impacted by the challenges. Together, we can develop innovative ways of partnership working, explore new joint ventures, governance structures and funding models that generate wider benefits for everyone involved.

Learn more about challenges

Our approach

Enabling WSCs requires groups of organisations and communities to embrace principles of water stewardship to deliver and care for housing and water cycle assets for the benefit of people and the planet.

The EWSC project is exploring and piloting how new roles, partnerships and stewardship agreements might enable WSC. The Enabling Actions identified from our work include scaling of innovative approaches within the housing sector and elsewhere in the industry.

Meet the EWSC Partnership