EWSC Action Area Projects

Project 2: Water for people and places

Identify and understand the knowledge and experience already at our disposal to define how water companies, local planning authorities and developers can unlock and share the value of water smart communities.

Project Description

Water is currently undervalued in the UK. It’s readily available and cheap with little incentive to change how it’s supplied to new developments. This project explores case studies of water reuse in new developments to understand why these schemes haven’t been fully utilised. This will help define an ‘end-to-end journey’ for effective water reuse, from design, through procurement and installation, to maintenance and user experience. It will cover responsibilities, costs, incentives and aim to unite the disjointed approach across institutions such as water companies, local authorities and developers.

This project focusses on the role of ‘anchor institutions’ in unlocking the shared value of water smart communities. It will explore how we align local authority policies, water company incentives and developers’ sustainability objectives to make water reuse viable; in this way developing ‘shared value models’ for water smart communities that are replicable and scalable.

EWSC Model entry point

Value

Delivery lens

Led by

The components of the project reside in the ‘Value’ part of the EWSC Framework, at individual, network and system levels. In exploring examples of existing reuse systems, the project also spans the stewardship and asset parts of the framework at the site level.

This project is about cross sector collaboration to help maximise the understanding and opportunities that already exist. This will lead to the creation of a model that facilitates impact at scale and leaves a legacy rather than a series of test cases.

Public Sector Led

EWSC Framework