Abstraction reform should include water trading, says CCC chief

Abstraction reform should include water trading, according to the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC).

Speaking exclusively to Utility Week, Matthew Bell said the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) should include water trading in its forthcoming, and long-awaited, abstraction reforms in order to increase efficient water use.

“We have to use water more efficiently,” he said. “We know that one of the ways of doing things more efficiently is to ensure that trading happens and that water is appropriately valued so it can go to the sectors and geographies where it is of most use.”

He added there are still “lots of details to be worked out on how it will all work” but that these can be agreed upon in order to establish a water trading mechanism within the abstraction reforms.

Abstraction reform was first touted in 2011’s white paper Water for Life, but failed to make it into the final draft of the 2014 Water Act. However, attention has returned to the topic and it is expected to be legislated during this parliament.

Bell said using water resources more efficiently is “a big issue” because of the impacts of climate change on the UK, along with growing populations and increased urbanisation.

The CCC boss also stated that water companies should not offer automatic sewerage connections to new developments.

“If you don’t have that you begin to think differently about how you’re going to handle the volumes of water being generated and do we need to handle them in a different way,” he said. “People need to think more broadly.”

Read the full interview with Matthew Bell in the next issue of Utility Week, and online from Friday 26 February.