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Technical Session: Beyond the basin - Plugging the UK’s water gap through Ofwat’s Water Efficiency Lab
England faces a water shortfall, with an estimated deficit of nearly 5 billion litres per day in England by 2055. In Wales, climate change means that the country faces a significant water management challenge, with an increase in demand projected to grow sharply by 2055 if action isn’t taken.
To help address this challenge, Ofwat established a £100 million Water Efficiency Fund to drive a transformative, sustained, and measurable reduction in water demand across England and Wales. This includes £25 million for its Water Efficiency Lab (WEL), a new challenge-led competition to attract innovative solutions to specific water efficiency challenges and unlock progress on water efficient technology, processes and approaches.
In this session, Jude Noro from Ofwat and Hannah Dummett from Challenge Works will:
- Introduce Ofwat’s Water Efficiency Lab to the audience
- Showcase the inaugural winners of the first WEL competition on Actionable Insights, including speakers from some of the winning projects. The first competition sought innovations that could provide households and businesses with tailored, actionable insights about their water usage to support them to reduce their consumption
- Highlight further funding opportunities available through the second WEL competition, which seeks innovations to reduce customer-side leakage, launching on 3 August 2026
