Op-ed by Amy Copson, water procurement manager, Consultus International.
With temperatures rising and dry weather patterns becoming the new normal, many businesses remain dangerously underprepared for one of the most critical operational risks they face; water scarcity. That’s why integrating water into your business strategy is no longer just a sustainability tick-box exercise – it’s a financial imperative.
While organisations routinely build robust resilience plans for power outages and cyber incidents, water is frequently left out of the conversation. Yet, as regulatory pressures mount and utility costs soar, water can no longer remain ‘the forgotten utility’.
The missing link in sustainability reporting
Gas and electricity traditionally dominate corporate sustainability agendas, but water is the missing piece of the net-zero puzzle. Organisations consistently overlook the hidden emissions and significant energy costs associated with water – specifically the heavy carbon footprint created by pumping, treating, transporting and heating it.
Without a clear water strategy, a business’ scope 3 emissions data remain incomplete, leaving them vulnerable to greenwashing accusations and non-compliance with evolving ESG reporting frameworks.
The cost of commercial blind spots
In the UK, this lack of visibility is highly prominent in water-intensive sectors like sport, leisure, hospitality, warehousing and manufacturing. Facilities preparing food and drink, running commercial fitness centres and spas, or major factory operations all consume vast volumes of water, yet legacy infrastructure often hides severe waste.
One Consultus International client, Redbridge Sports Centre Trust Ltd, suffered three separate underground leaks within one of their complexes. Relying entirely on manual meter readings, the fault took weeks to identify. By the time it was resolved, the centre had lost the equivalent of four Olympic-sized swimming pools of treated water, landing them with a devastating unbudgeted bill of more than £30,000.
Providing our expert energy consultancy services, we upgraded Redbridge to automated meter reading (AMR) technology with instant leak alerts. This gave their team full consumption visibility, protecting their budget while future-proofing the business against further leak damage.
Protecting the bottom line
The financial narrative around water procurement has fundamentally shifted. It is no longer just about hunting for minor rate reductions, but mitigating aggressive, structural cost increases.
Businesses currently face a two-pronged threat:
- Soaring tariffs: we are in Year 2 of the water sector’s critical five-year regulatory review (PR24). Driven by aging UK infrastructure and intense environmental pressures, commercial water costs are climbing fast, with some businesses experiencing volatile budget spikes of up to 45%.
- The cost of doing nothing: complacency is also draining corporate budgets before a single asset is managed. Estimates suggest 72% of businesses in the UK are still stuck on expensive, out-of-contract default tariffs, entirely unaware they are overpaying.
Wave of regulations
The regulatory landscape is tightening rapidly following the Independent Water Commission’s final report to the UK government. Concluding that the post-privatisation system is unfit for modern climate realities, the commission proposed an 88-reform package.
This includes replacing Ofwat with a strict, unified ‘super regulator’, ending operator self-monitoring and introducing mandatory 25-year national water strategies. Crucially, the government has acknowledged that water bills must rise nationally to fund this massive infrastructure investment.
Furthermore, regional mandates are already penalising unprepared businesses. For instance, under the Anglian Profile Plus Efficiency Tariff, commercial clients in the region consuming more than 25,000 cubic metres per year must undergo formal water surveys. By 2027, these parameters are expected to widen further to include a broader range of corporate supplies.
Organisations that fail to implement the mandatory efficiency measures face a 25% invoice uplift penalty for non-compliance.
Building a watertight strategy
Because there is less flexibility to manipulate raw commodity pricing in the water market compared to electricity and gas, many organisations simply ignore it. However, losing water supply doesn’t just halt facilities, it can trigger immediate, catastrophic financial and reputational loss – particularly for businesses reliant on cooling towers for refrigeration or industrial processes.
A comprehensive water strategy shifts the focus from reactive crisis management to proactive financial and resource governance. Forward-thinking businesses and ESG leaders should prioritise three steps:
1. Immediate priority: deploy smart monitoring
Install Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) devices to transition away from slow manual checks to instantly catch consumption spikes before they become financial disasters.
2. Critical audit: navigate wholesaler efficiency mandates
Proactively audit your regional exposure, particularly in water-stressed zones, to ensure compliance, such as with the Anglian region.
3. Continuous operational action: target active leak detection
Establish formal, routine monitoring for high-waste areas, deploy isolated sub-metering on water intensive assets and institutionalise baseline staff conservation habits.
Creating ripples
As climate change accelerates the frequency of drought conditions, water is transitioning from a low-interest utility to a high-stakes strategic resource. It directly affects operational resilience, sustainability performance and long-term business viability.
With increasingly volatile UK summers, the question for business leaders is not whether water scarcity will impact their organisation, but whether they have a strategy in place to survive it.
Learn more at www.consultus.com/services/water-services/
