Developing a stewardship model for ‘water smart communities’

Stuart Edwards, a Project Delivery Manager from United Utilities and a key partner in ‘Enabling Water Smart Communities’, explains the development of stewardship models for new housing developments.

What is meant by stewardship?

Stewardship is essential for looking after water as a common good, alongside other commons such as land, to maximise community benefits.

During the EWSC project’s ‘Discovery Phase’ three stewardship principles have emerged as critical to enabling water smart communities: building a strong shared culture; good governance of resources and assets; and delivering wider outcomes through the stewardship of water assets. You can read more about EWSC’s insights on stewardship here.

Building a water stewardship model for new housing estates

The EWSC ‘stewardship’ project builds on the three stewardship principles by exploring the creation of a sustainable community-led stewardship model for Integrated Water Management (IWM) that empowers diverse sectors to adopt, operate and maintain assets.

The stewardship model will initially focus on the asset group of Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS), but as development of the model progresses, water reuse and recycling assets will also be considered. The model is centred around new-build housing estates with a view to maximise opportunities to create and install innovative technologies.

The project aims to create new governance and legal models and financial and economic instruments to underpin multi-agency, cross-sector and resilient collaboration. As part of this, the project will need to provide regulatory and institutional support for new stewardship entities.


Click here to read the full article on CIWEM’s website.