Paul Hickey, deputy director of water resources at the Environment Agency, will head up the Regulators’ Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Development (RAPID) scheme.
RAPID, which was announced last year, will enable the construction of large-scale water infrastructure projects by addressing the current barriers to development and encouraging collaborative working across traditional regional boundaries.
An industry insider told Utility Week Hickey’s appointment as managing director was both welcome and sensible.
Speaking the Westminster Energy Environment and Transport Forum on England’s Water Market, Hickey said the sector needed a step change in ambitions in both demand management and resource management to avoid a serious drought in this country.
He said a long-term view of the environment was essential to water resource planning and there is a need to examine the water usage needs of wider society including the demands of industry and agriculture across the country.
RAPID will work with the five regional water resource planning groups in England to deliver long term improvements and take an adaptive approach to achieve shared goals.
The two main tasks of the RAPID scheme are to find the optimum mix of different resilience schemes and decide how they can meet the needs of the nation. This would take account of best value not simply lowest cost.
Secondly, the group will examine barriers – such as regulatory ones – to getting projects off the ground. Hickey said cross-sector collaboration was necessary and RAPID would welcome it from across the sector.
“We all have a role: we need to challenge the perception we are a water rich country,” he said and concluded that to improve the state of the environment, the sector and stakeholders need to “connect people” to the water in their local environment to encourage the public to treat water as a precious resource.
The group, comprising Ofwat, the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate, is calling for a nationwide planning network and is keen to explore options for redistributing water to tackle flooding as well as drought in coming years.
The National Infrastructure Report in 2018 assessed the UK would need an additional 1,300 megalitres a day by the 2030s.