business plan data tables pr24

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Ofwat publishes updated PR24 final methodology submission tables and guidance and requests data on energy prices and consumption

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We submitted our 2025-30 business plan to our regulator, Ofwat, on 2 October 2023. The plan proposes levels of investment to maintain and enhance services to both customers and the environment.

Our latest business plan sets out what we will deliver between 2025-30.

Read the supporting documents for our 2025-30 business plan.

Planning for the future

Every five years we publish a plan that sets out how we’ll be improving services for our customers and the environment. This links to our long-term plans under our strategic direction .

This plan is based on what customers tell us is most important to them, what regulators require us to do, and our views on how to deliver these two sets of requirements in the best value way possible.

We take information from customer surveys and focus groups as part of our ongoing customer engagement programme and include requirements from regulators, such as the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI).

The business plan details the level of investment needed to achieve these improvements. Ofwat regulates this investment, its impact on customer bills and the services customers receive.

Our proposals for 2025-30

In October 2023 we submitted our business plan for 2025-30, known as PR24, to Ofwat for scrutiny and assessment.

Since then, our plan has been updated in some areas. The key changes and their impact on expenditure and average bills are summarised below.

March 2024 update: Latest information on our business plan

Since the submission of our PR24 business plan to Ofwat in October 2023, we have made some small changes to parts of our plan. These have been in response to requests from Ofwat or other regulators and to clarify some points in our original plan. The result of these changes to date is that Ofwat are now considering a PR24 business plan for Wessex Water that includes total expenditure of £5,007 million (down from £5,031 million in our October 2023 plan), and average annual customer bills of £666 by 2030 (down from £668 in our October 2023 plan). We expect Ofwat's draft determinations will be based on this expenditure and these bills, and the associated data tables .

The main reason for the change to our total expenditure for PR24 and associated average annual customer bills is a reduction in the costs of our smart metering programme. We have also made some corrections to the costs of planned net zero and biodiversity schemes, which has slightly affected our total expenditure.

Ofwat has also asked us to provide some further data tables to reflect the Environment Agency’s 18 September 2023 version of the Water Industry National Environment Programme (WINEP). These tables reflect the additional costs of delivering the full WINEP nutrients programme by 2030, rather than phasing some of this programme beyond this date (as proposed in our business plan). This would increase total expenditure to £5,416 million and average customer bills to £690 by 2030. However, it is important to note that this is not a revised Wessex Water business plan submission in that:

• only a subset of data tables (primarily on cost information) have been updated
• the deliverability, financeability and affordability of a plan that included this work is not covered by our board assurance statements
• these numbers are unaudited and have not been assured or approved by our Board
• we have also not sought to update our view of the appropriate WACC to reflect an increase in the capital programme of this size.

Consequently, we do not expect Ofwat's draft determinations to include this expenditure and its impact on bills.

An average bill increase of up to 30% (up to £670) would still mean that Wessex Water bills are lower in real terms than they were 15 years ago. However, we are very conscious that this is a time of austerity so any bill increase will be unwelcome, and that some customers are already struggling to pay the current level of bills. Almost all our investments are driven by legal or regulatory requirements but even so, we will work hard with our regulators to minimise the bill impact.

For customers who find it difficult to pay, we already have tailored assistance programmes to help and we will extend these as necessary to meet our commitment of eliminating water poverty by 2030.

On 11 July Ofwat published its draft decisions, known as its ‘Draft Determination’. This sets out its view on all aspects of the plan, including required levels of investment, the performance that it expects from this investment, and the associated level of customer bills. We are currently reviewing these draft decisions and what they mean for our plan.

We will be submitting further information to Ofwat, including any further revisions to our plan in light of these draft decisions, by the end of August.

Find out more about the Draft Determination .

Your water, your say

We have talked to thousands of customers, businesses and stakeholders over a two-year period to help us develop our 2025-30 business plan.

At the heart of our long-term plan are eight outcomes that customers and stakeholders have told us are most important to them.

We held a 'Your water, your say' session in April 2023 for customers and stakeholders to hear how the plan had developed, have their say and ask questions. We used this feedback, together with insight from our extensive customer engagement and discussions with regulators, to finalise our business plan to submit to Ofwat.

At a follow-up session in November 2023, Group Chief Executive Colin Skellett presented a summary of the submitted plan and opened the floor for questions. Insight from this event will help Ofwat in its assessment of our plan. Watch the presentation below.

If you’d like to find out more, the presentation slides and written records for both sessions can be found in the document box below. Colin’s presentation from the April session is also available to watch.

In July 2024 Ofwat held its own Your Water, Your Say session to get customers and other stakeholders’ views on its draft decisions on companies’ business plans.

Your water, your say presentation - November 2023

Your water, your say written record - November 2023

Your water, your say presentation - April 2023

Your water, your say written record - April 2023

What happens when?

A full timeline setting out all the key stages in the price review process is set out below.

March 2022: Setting our overall direction

We started by setting out our future priorities - what we aim to deliver for customers, wider society and the environment. Find out more about our strategic direction .

June 2022: Draft Drainage and Wastewater Management Plan (DWMP) submission

We worked with our stakeholders, regulators and customers to create our draft DWMP, which set out how we aim to deliver resilient drainage and wastewater infrastructure for the next 25 years. We published the draft DWMP for wider stakeholder and customer consultation. The consultation ran from 30 June 2022 to 1 October 2022.

July - September 2022: Ofwat publish draft methodology

Ofwat published their draft methodology in July. We fed back our response in September.

Additional response documents can be found in the documents area .

October 2022: Draft Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP) submission

We submitted our plan for the next 25 years to Defra, setting out how we will balance water supplies with water demands to ensure adequate supply for our customers, while also protecting the environment. We then published the plan as a draft for consultation – the consultation ran for 12 weeks up until February 2023.

November 2022: Water Industry National Environment Programme submission

The Environmental Agency lists outputs we need to deliver in a document called the Water Industry National Environment Programme (WINEP).

We submitted proposed options to address these outputs in November 2022, with a further submission in January 2023 particularly covering our nutrient and storm overflow reduction proposals.

These submissions took into account legislation and regulator guidance as known at the time, with subsequent revisions to accommodate updated legislation and guidance, eg, updates to the government’s Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan in September 2023 and the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act becoming law from October 2023.

Our submitted business plan in October 2023 – and the associated prior customer and stakeholder engagement – was based on our best interpretation of existing and forthcoming regulator expectations.

December 2022: Ofwat publish final methodology

Ofwat considered stakeholders' comments on the draft methodology, and published the final methodology in December 2022.

January - March 2023: The Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) submission

The Drinking Water Inspectorate oversees the drinking water quality aspects of our plan. We submitted documentation to the DWI to gain its support for some specific investment proposals for 2025-30. We received formal letters of support from the DWI, which we included in our October 2023 business plan submission to Ofwat.

Spring 2023: Customer and stakeholder engagement events

Thank you to everyone who came to the events we held across our region and our online 'Your water, your say' session. The events gave customers the chance to find out more about our future plans and have their say. We combined these learnings with other feedback from our extensive customer and stakeholder engagement programme to help us finalise our business plan.

May 2023: Final Drainage and Wastewater Management Plan (DWMP) submission

We made significant changes to our DWMP to reflect feedback from the draft DWMP consultation – our Statement of Response (in Annex H of the full report ) shows how we listened and responded to the comments. We also made changes to account for further guidance from regulators, and Ofwat’s long-term delivery strategy methodology. We published our final DWMP on 31 May 2023 - it is available on our DWMP page.

Early summer 2023: Acceptability and affordability testing

We went through a further stage of research to test customers’ views on how acceptable and affordable they thought the plan was.

Summer 2023: Early submissions to Ofwat

Some early submissions to Ofwat were required, for example for adjustments to our costs that are not applicable to all companies.

The final versions of these cost adjustment claims were formally submitted to Ofwat as part of our main October 2023 business plan submission – and are available at WSX08 and WSX09 .

August 2023: Revised draft Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP) submission

We updated our draft WRMP based on consultation feedback and updates to requirements. The revised draft plan was submitted to Defra in August 2023 and published on our WRMP page in October 2023. Defra will now determine whether this can be published as our final plan.

October 2023: Business plan submission

We submitted our plan to Ofwat – the documents are available in our Business Plan document library .

Late 2023 / 2024: Review by Ofwat

A period of ongoing discussion and review with Ofwat. We ran an online ‘Your water, your say’ session in November 2023 to help Ofwat understand customers’ and stakeholders’ views on the business plan we submitted.

July 2024: Draft Determination

Ofwat published its provisional assessment of our business plan. We are reviewing what these draft decisions mean for our plan and will provide a response to Ofwat by the end of August.

December 2024: Final determination

The final documentation that outlines our allowed investment is due to be published in December 2024.

April 2025: Delivery of 2025-30 business plan begins

Once the plan is agreed, from April 2025 we will then start delivering the improvements set out in our 2025-30 business plan.

These documents summarise the 2025-30 business plan that we submitted to Ofwat in October 2023 – supporting documents are available in our Business Plan document library.

WSX01 - Striking the balance (Executive summary)

WSX02 - An overview of our business plan

WSX03 - Long term delivery strategy

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What is a price review?

2024 price review.

Water companies support all aspects of life. Safe and reliable water and wastewater services are essential for our day to day lives, our wellbeing, and our natural world. Customers in England and Wales expect those services to keep improving, and for water companies to deliver benefits to the environment and wider society. Our  2019 price review  set stretching targets to drive up performance over the next five years.

We’re now looking ahead and thinking about how we can encourage companies to build on progress to date.

Key milestones

• In December 2020 we shared our first discussion paper for the 2024 price review (PR24).  PR24 and beyond: Future challenges and opportunities for the water sector  reflected our initial thinking for how to deliver better outcomes for customers, the environment, and wider society.
• In May 2021, we shared our ideas and ambitions for PR24 in  PR24 and beyond: Creating tomorrow, together . We’ve set out four ambitions for what PR24 can achieve for customers and the environment, and principles for how we’ll approach and design the price review.
• We published the  PR24 draft methodology on 7 July 2022.
• The final methodology was published on Tuesday 13 December 2022.
• We published our draft determinations on 11 July 2024 and we will consult on our decisions. The consultation will close at 12 noon on 28 August 2024.
• We will hold two ‘Your water, your say’ meetings on 23 and 24 July to discuss and answer questions about our draft determinations.
• We will publish our final determinations on 19 December 2024.

Upcoming milestones

PR24 Useful documents

Visit the PR24 Useful documents page for a selection of useful documents about the 2024 price review

Get 2024 price review news

Sign up to receive our regular PR24 newsletter

Our Business Plan summary 2025–30

Stronger, Greener, Healthier: Our plan for the North West

The North West is an exciting and diverse region; it's where we live, work and play. We've built a plan for the next five years which has been shaped by, and adapted to meet, the diverse needs of the North West.

Highlights from our ambitious plan

Great quality water every time you turn on the tap.

Improving water quality for 1.4 million customers

Safeguarding water supplies for over 2 million customers

Investing £975 million in a programme to build a more resilient network, fixing leaks and replacing 950 kilometres of old pipes and mains

Improving resilience so we can halve the chance of having a hosepipe ban in the future

Our largest ever environmental investment programme

Improving the quality of our rivers by reducing storm overflow spills by 60% over the decade to 2030

Protecting and enhancing over 500 kilometres of rivers and improving our bathing waters and shellfish beds

Strengthening our network against increased rainfall to reduce flooding of homes and businesses

Working with local authorities to separate rainwater from our systems so we build more resilient communities as we all respond to the impacts of climate change such as flooding

Doubling our financial support for those who need it . . . making sure nobody gets left behind

Providing £525 million of affordability support for one in six customers who may be struggling to pay their bill

Installing 900,000 smart meters to help homes and businesses use less water and save money

Driving benefits for the North West's economy

Providing great quality skilled jobs, attracting much-needed and sustainable investment into the North West economy – we expect our plan would support 30,000 jobs across United Utilities and our supply chain

Louise Beardmore

Chief executive, the fantastic region we serve.

Our region is diverse and has been shaped by multicultural communities. It’s the birthplace of Kendal Mint Cake and scouse, classic literature like Peter Rabbit and Alice in Wonderland. It boasts numerous world-renowned sports teams. It’s the region that brought the world The Beatles, Oasis and Harry Styles as well as the bright colours of Manchester Pride and bright lights of Blackpool Tower Ballroom and Media City. It is underpinned by a rich diversity – home to Europe’s largest Chinese community and Britain’s oldest African community. The North West is somewhere we are proud to call home.

Over 7 million people and 200,000 businesses – by 2050 we’ll serve around 1 million more

The fourth smallest region by size, with the third largest population and home to 25% of England’s dairy herds

Our communities are diverse and have different levels of prosperity and needs

Levelling up is a priority, and devolution is advanced with 2 city regions

12% of households are affected by water poverty, more than 50% higher than the national average

40% more urban rainfall than the industry average

New environmental requirements are driving unprecedented long-term investment

Over 90% of drinking water comes from surface water sources

A legacy of industrial heritage and heavy manufacturing based on Victorian infrastructure

A growing economy which contributes 10% of national GDP

Providing great water for a stronger , greener and healthier North West

How our plan provides a stronger, greener and healthier North West

Helping people with their bills - doubling our support to

Investing in our region, enabling growth by upgrading

of water mains

reduction in interruptions to your water supply

customers helped by our financial support schemes

additional litres of water to ensure a reliable supply of water

reduction in the likelihood

of a hosepipe ban

new high quality skilled jobs

Reducing leakage by

Helping homes and businesses save

litres of water

to reduce spills from over 400 overflows

Investing around

to improve bathing and shellfish waters

hectares of SSSI to enhance biodiversity and water quality

Protecting and enhancing over

of rivers, spending over £900m to reduce nutrients

reduction in the number of pollution incidents

Spending £196m to reduce carbon emissions by

(against 2020 baseline)

Delivering a

reduction in sewer flooding in homes and businesses

reduction in water quality contacts

Enhancing safety at

reservoirs for people to enjoy their visit

Replacing lead pipes at

of the Vyrnwy Aqueduct, improving water quality for over 500,000 people

Improving bathing waters

for recreation

Here you can download a summary of our plan for the entire North West region as well as summaries for each of the five counties of Cheshire, Cumbria, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside.

Regional summary

County summaries:

Greater Manchester

Merseyside (including Halton)

Our full business plan

Read more about our plan in the below documents.

• Chapter 1 Executive Summary
• Chapter 2 Great water for the North West
• Chapter 3 Customers and communities shape our business plan
• Chapter 4 Driving affordability
• Chapter 5 Delivering great service
• Chapter 6 Delivering social and environmental value
• Chapter 7 Resilience and asset health
• Chapter 8 Delivering at efficient cost
• Chapter 9 Risk, return and responsible behaviour
• Chapter 10 Assurance and track record
• Board Assurance Statement
• Long-Term Delivery Strategy