By 2050, England faces a five-billion-litre-a-day gap between the water we have and the water we need. Half of that gap must be closed by using less. Yet the sector has no shared way to see, in near real time, what is actually working.
That is the gap the Water Demand Observatory is built to close. And our Proof of Concept, delivered in partnership with eight water companies, Ofwat, the Environment Agency, CCW, Defra and Water Resources South East, has now shown it can be done.
What we set out to do
The Proof of Concept had a simple aim: prove that a national observatory could bring water demand data into one place, track what drives it, and judge with confidence whether water-saving measures deliver. We tested this on real data, real interventions and real questions from across the sector.
What we found
Across twelve interventions and two smart metering programmes, we showed that consistent evaluation is possible. One home retrofit programme produced a statistically significant 10% drop in per-household consumption straight after the visit, rising to 17% a year later. Smart metering suppressed peak demand more sharply than basic metering. And our modelling traced demand swings back to their causes (weather, holidays, the cost-of-living squeeze, the freeze-thaw of December 2022) rather than leaving them as guesswork.
Just as telling were the gaps. Data sits in different formats across companies. Smart meter definitions vary. Intervention records are often thin. Without a shared platform, every company solves the same problems alone.
Why now
AMP8 will deliver the largest and most varied set of water-saving measures the sector has ever attempted. If we cannot measure what works, we cannot plan what comes next. The observatory is, in plain terms, an insurance policy for affordability and resilience: cheaper than waiting for the next drought to teach us the same lesson twice.
What happens next
We are now seeking funding to build the full national observatory: a phased data roadmap, an assurance framework, an intervention evaluation forum, clear governance, and an open dashboard the whole sector can use.
The Proof of Concept has done its job. The case is made. The next step is to build it.
