Our approach

Approach to Regional Plan 2029

Planning for the region’s water future

 

WReN have published our Approach to Regional Plan 2029, setting out how we will plan for water across the North of England over the next 25 years.

 

It explains the challenges we face and how we’ll work together to make sure there is plentiful water for the public, the environment and the economy in the future.

 

The Challenge

Water demand is rising, whilst climate change and environmental pressures are reducing supply, we plan to take a collaborative approach to ensure water is available where and when it is needed to support the environment, businesses, homes, and to facilitate new growth.

 

Our Ambition

Our overall ambition is:

 

to secure long term, resilient and sustainable water for the Water Resources North region –

enabling growth and net zero – through cross sector collaboration, early risk visibility, and

clear, accessible best value planning that delivers Environmental Destination outcomes and

national water consumption targets.

 

Our five ambition areas are:

  1. Long-term water security: We will facilitate effective integrated, evidence-based planning to ensure water is available for communities, the environment, and industries under a range of various future scenarios.​
  2. Enable growth and net zero:We will champion collaboration that fosters growth to support the regional economy and accelerate the energy transition.
  3. Environmental and climate resilience:We will work to ensure the WReN area becomes drought and climate resilient with nature-positive solutions that strengthen ecosystems and catchments.
  4. Early risk visibility and adaptive planning:Our planning will account for uncertainties and risk through adaptive planning to ensure water availability under a range of possible futures.
  5. Integrated planning and policy influencing: We will collaborate with government, regulators, other regional groups, and other strategic planners, including future regional system planners, to ensure water is integrated into future policy and strategy.

 

What next

This document is the starting point in developing our Regional Plan 2029. We will be working with our stakeholders to develop and test our planning approach to generate robust options and best value plans.

 

More details on how we are developing our Plan can be found in the 'Document library' section.

Water Resources Management Plans

In this section