UK Water System Resilience: Looking for Solutions Across the Pond

About

This MCC paper explores what resilience really means for water systems, and why the UK can learn from US tools and case studies as pressures from climate change and ageing assets intensify. Discover actionable strategies to strengthen planning, regulation, and long-term service reliability.

Abstract

Starting from themes raised by the Independent Water Commission (IWC), the paper frames resilience as the ability to absorb shocks (like droughts and floods) while adapting to long-run challenges. It identifies shared UK/US issues, ageing infrastructure, fragmentation, and extreme weather, and explores US case studies (including consolidation approaches and more hands-on supervisory regulation) that could inform UK policy and regional planning. The note emphasises that resilience must be tackled at system and governance levels, not treated as a narrow technical afterthought.

Preview Publication

Want to receive Excel backup data & analysis for this report?

Buy Data

Featured

This paper has been published on following other platforms

No items found.

I was delighted that MCC's work was completed on time, and within budget, helping us deliver important changes and improvements, to the benefit of our stakeholders. ​ MCC's report is published on the CCC website.

- Bea Natzler
Team Leader at Climate Change Committee, UK

I am delighted to recommend MCC Economics. Specifically, I worked closely with PJ, who helped us with our Nuclear and CCUS projects. PJ helped us develop new policies and answer questions from our stakeholders. ​​His support helped us deliver important changes and improvements, to the benefit of our stakeholders.

- Gordon Hutcheson
Head of Nuclear Policy at Ofgem, UK

MCC Economics has helped us better understand the most important issues for our stakeholders, including: charges, shareholder returns, debt payments and inflation impacts.

- Leila N. Nasr
Section Head at Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi

I am delighted to recommend PJ and his team at MCC Economics. We've been working together on National Policy Statements to help meet net zero targets for 2030 and 2050. We initially appointed MCC Economics to support us on offshore wind consultation analysis and have recently reappointed MCC Economics to undertake a larger consultation analysis role across all sectors, including hydrogen, CCUS and networks. I can confirm that PJ and his team have shown excellent spreadsheet skills, alongside very good project management, planning and analysis skills, helping us deliver important changes, and continuous improvements, to the benefit of our stakeholders.

- Amy McHugh
Head of Environment in the Energy Infrastructure Planning Policy, UK

I am delighted to recommend PJ and his team from MCC Economics. They helped us with our price controls for Heathrow airport and for NATS (En Route) plc (the air traffic services provider). Specifically, the MCC team helped us deliver important changes and improvements to our financial models and supporting policy documents, to the benefit of our stakeholders.

- Dan Rock
Head of Corporate Finance at CAA, UK

I am delighted to confirm that I worked with PJ on a retail project in 2015. The project helped stakeholders understand electricity costs and charges. Specifically, the project helped us explain to stakeholders, internally and externally, why electricity charges differed across the regions (GB, NI & Ireland). PJ was a key member on the project team, which helped deliver changes and improvements in the understanding of energy retail.

- Kevin Shiels
Director at Utility Regulator, Northern Ireland