Higher water bills must mean fewer leaks and cleaner rivers - otherwise, what's the point?

This is now England’s third drought in five years.

At the same time, the water industry is embarking on the largest investment programme in its history. Ofwat has provisionally approved a further £3.4 billion in investment by water companies, on top of the major increases in spending and household bills already underway.

Customers are therefore entitled to ask a straightforward question: what will they see in return?

There is no doubt that significant investment is needed. England’s water infrastructure must cope with an ageing asset base, population growth, housing development, environmental pressures and a climate that is placing increasing strain on water resources.

The scale of the response is substantial. Around £104 billion of expenditure is planned across England and Wales between 2025 and 2030.

But expenditure alone is not an outcome.

Customers have heard commitments to improvement before. Bills have increased while many households continue to experience supply interruptions, see visible leaks, and remain concerned about the condition of rivers and waterways. Average household bills rose significantly in 2025/26 and increased again this year.

For customers, the test is therefore not simply whether water companies spend what has been allocated. It is whether that investment produces tangible improvements in network performance.

That means fewer burst mains disrupting roads and communities, fewer supply interruptions, lower leakage, cleaner rivers, and greater resilience during periods of drought.

It also means demonstrating that investment is helping the sector anticipate problems rather than simply responding once they occur.

One of the sector's less visible weaknesses has been its understanding of the assets themselves. The Independent Water Commission found that the industry does not yet have sufficient understanding of the health and resilience of its asset base, with assets not fully mapped and considerable variation in how their condition is assessed.

You cannot manage infrastructure effectively without reliable information on what assets exist, where they are, what condition they are in, and how their performance is changing.

Better asset data and monitoring can play a practical role. Pressure, flow, and acoustic data can help identify abnormal network behaviour earlier, while reliable asset information allows engineers to understand deterioration, assess risk, and target interventions before failures become more disruptive and expensive.

This is not about technology for technology’s sake. It is about giving engineers and operators better evidence on which to make investment decisions.

For the average household, that distinction is important.

When bills are rising, customers should be able to understand not simply where money has been allocated but what improvement it is expected to produce. Is expenditure targeting clearly identifying risks and capacity constraints? What will change as a result? How will performance be measured? And, critically, will customers be able to see whether those outcomes have actually been achieved?

Public confidence depends on connecting investment with improvement.

The same principle applies beyond existing customers. The network must also support new homes, economic development, and new sources of demand.

When thousands of homes are proposed for a town, the local water and wastewater networks either have sufficient capacity to support that growth, or they do not. Emerging demands from industries such as data centres add another dimension, particularly in locations where water may be required for cooling.

Better demand forecasting, hydraulic modelling, and asset data can help companies understand where capacity constraints are likely to emerge before development takes place and direct investment accordingly.

That creates an opportunity to move away from an approach in which infrastructure continually catches up with development and towards one in which capacity, resilience, and growth are planned together.

It is also how the sector can prioritise projects based on readiness to proceed and a clear assessment of which are likely to deliver the greatest benefit.

As water companies invest billions more over the coming years, they will need to demonstrate meaningful progress. Formal regulatory reporting will remain important, but public confidence will ultimately depend on clear evidence of outcomes people can recognise: more reliable supplies, fewer leaks, healthier rivers, and a system better able to cope when drought arrives.

Customers are funding more than infrastructure; they are funding better infrastructure performance.

The water industry is asking households and businesses to support an unprecedented programme of investment. That investment is necessary, but neither expenditure nor construction activity should be treated as measures of success in themselves.

The real test is whether the network becomes more reliable, more resilient, and better able to support the communities and economy that depend upon it.

Higher bills may be part of securing that future. In return, customers deserve much clearer evidence that the money is delivering it.

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Mark Coates is Vice President of Infrastructure Policy Advancement at Bentley Systems and former International Forum Chair of British Water.

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