Drought Management Plan 2027 Consultation
Our Drought Plan outlines the way we would respond in a drought situation and the actions we would take as it progresses. This plan, if put into action, has the potential to impact the way our customers use water. We operate in a dry and densely populated area of the country and are at risk of experiencing droughts. Our aim is to ensure we are better prepared for these events than ever before.
We are not starting from scratch, this plan is based on our previous experience of drought events and how we have managed them, as well as experience from across the water industry. We have adopted a different approach to this draft Drought Plan which signals a greater focus on the actions we will take in a severe drought event. This is primarily an operational plan in remit, but it also articulates the vital importance of early communication to increase awareness of the indicators of environmental stress that tell us a drought may be near. Droughts are complex and their impacts and risks can be difficult to mitigate – we are committed to working collaboratively with our communities to increase understanding and to minimise impacts on the environment.
Our Drought Plan includes the actions we would take to manage the effects of drought on our water supplies. These include demand management actions, where we would ask our customers to use less water. This is either voluntarily or through temporary use restrictions and depends on the severity of the situation. In severe droughts, we can also apply for drought permits and orders to take more water from underground aquifers where necessary to meet customer demand and further limit what we use water for.
Consultation
We submitted our draft Plan to the Secretary of State for security review on 26th March 2026 and after receiving their approval to publish we are now in a period of public consultation for ten weeks ending 17th July 2026.
We are now inviting views from customers and stakeholders on the key elements of our plan as we need a drought plan that represents your interests, our communities and the environment. Please take a look at our non-technical summary document for a high level overview or our full Drought Plan if you would like to understand more detail.
Anyone who would like to provide feedback on our draft Drought Plan can do so by email or post or by completing the online form on this webpage.
Please note:
Representations by email should be sent to: water.resources@defra.gov.uk. Please include Affinity Water in your email subject field and copy in our consultation email address: DMPconsultation@affinitywater.co.uk.
If necessary, representations by post should be sent to:
Drought Plan Consultation
Defra
Drought
Seacole, 2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DF
If you would like to view hard copies of our draft drought plan documents, please let us know by emailing DMPconsultation@affinitywater.co.uk and we will arrange for these to be posted to you.
Next Steps
Once the public consultation ends and we have received all the feedback on our draft plan, we will publish a Statement of Response on our website in October 2026. This will detail each of the representations made on our Plan and explain whether we have made changes to the Plan as a result. Where we have not made changes as a result of comments, we will explain why.
Along with our Statement of Response we will submit a revised draft Drought Plan to Defra, and once we receive final approval, we will publish our new Plan on our website in Spring 2027.
