Final Drought Plan 2020

At Welsh Water, our vision is; “To earn the trust of customers, every day”. That vision reflects our unique ownership structure: we have no shareholders and so can concentrate solely on delivering the best possible value for money to our customers. All the profits that we make are reinvested in the business to improve outcomes for our customers and the natural environment, or are used to benefit customers. We need to hold to this way of working every day, especially during stressful periods such as droughts which can be challenging for both ourselves and customers.

We are trusted to plan for drought and trusted to deliver these plans if and when drought periods occur – we must continue to earn that trust every day. Welsh Water’s long term ambitions have been set out in our Water 2050 document and this places the maintenance of wholesome water supplies at its heart. One of our key strategies is what we have titled “Enough Water For All”. In essence, this is to ensure that we always have sufficient water in line with our customers’ expectations, even in times of drought. Our Water Resources Management Plan and our Drought Plan are at the centre of this strategy.

Producing and maintaining a Drought Plan is a statutory process required by Government who have set out the legal basis for this in the Water Industry Act 1991. We are directed by Welsh Government who also provide the guiding principles for our plan. We have worked closely with Natural Resources Wales who produce the Drought Planning Guidance for water companies in Wales. Our Drought Plan sets out how we will deal with drought conditions within both the urban and rural parts of our supply area, and how we will monitor the effect of any actions that we take on the natural environment.


We published our draft plan for consultation on the 25th July 2019 for 8 weeks, closing on 19th September. During the consultation process we:

• Contacted over 120 organisations directly
• Contacted all relevant Members of Parliament and all Welsh Assembly Members
• Published the Plan on our website and publicised it via our Welsh Water Twitter, Facebook and Instagram feeds
• In total we received comments from seven separate respondents.

Following the closure of the consultation, we published our revised Draft Drought Plan 2020 on the 7th November 2019, together with our Statement of Response. We have today (26th February 2021) published our Final Drought Plan 2020 after receiving direction to do so from the Welsh Government (dated 19th February 2021).

If you require any further information, or copies of supporting reports that are not published on our website, relating to our Final Drought Plan 2020, then please email Water.Resources@dwrcymru.com.