Sutton and East Surrey Water

All water companies in England and Wales are required by the Government to produce a Drought Plan outlining operational aspects of their supply systems that relate specifically to drought management.

Sutton and East Surrey Water (SESW) has prepared and now published its Draft Drought Plan 2011 (Plan) under the requirements of Sections 39B and 39C of the Water Industry Act 1991, amended by the Water Act 2003, and clarified in the Drought Plan Direction 2011. The Plan, previously published in January 2008, has been updated following enactment of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, which SESW deems to be a 'material change of circumstances arising from a new statutory provision'.

From 1 October 2010, section 36 of the Flood and Water Management Act allows water companies a wider range of temporary water use restrictions that they can implement during a drought without requiring a drought order. This updates the legislation on temporary water use restrictions, substitutes the previous section 76 of the Water Industry Act 1991 and therefore supersedes the previous hosepipe ban powers. Details of how we propose to implement this new legislation can be found in Section 3 of our Draft Drought Plan.

In summary, our Draft Drought Plan sets out the actions we will consider taking in response to drought events of different severities, guided by the position at any time of reservoir and groundwater levels in relation to specified 'trigger curves'. Our Plan aims to minimise any potential for impact on the environment if a drought occurs, but where potential impacts are identified presents a balance of measures which may include restrictions on customers' use of water, as described above.

In accordance with section 37(B)(3) of the Water Industry Act 1991, we confirm that no information has been excluded from the published plan on the grounds of national security, nor do we consider there to be any commercially confidential information contained within our Plan.

Hard copies of the Plan are available for you to view, should you wish, at our head office, the address of which is provided here.

Please send any representations you may wish to make on our Plan to the Secretary of State, either by email or post; they will then be passed on to us.

Representations by email should be sent to: water.resources@defra.gsi.gov.uk

Representations by post should be sent to:

Secretary of State, Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
Drought Plan Consultation
Water Availability and Quality Programme
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Area 2C, Ergon House
Horseferry Road
London
SW1P 2AL

The closing date for representations to be received by the Secretary of State is Monday 30th January 2012.

Following this 8 week public consultation, and within 15 weeks of the publication date of our Draft Drought Plan in accordance with the Drought Plan Direction 2011, we will publish a statement of response to representations received.  This will set out:

• The consideration that we have given to representations received;
• Any changes that we will make to our Draft Drought Plan as a result of consideration of those representations and our reasons for doing so; and
• Where no change will be made to the Draft Drought Plan as a result of consideration of any representation, the reason for this.

Statement of Response to the Public Consultation on Sutton and East Surrey Water’s Draft Drought Plan 2011

Thank you to all the people for taking the time to respond during the public consultation on our Draft Drought Plan 2011.  We have considered your comments and have incorporated our response into our Statement of Response, which has been formally submitted to the Secretary of State, and which can be viewed here. 

Documents

• Draft Drought Plan 2011 (pdf)
• Draft Drought Plan SoR (pdf)