PR24 will introduce a new Ofwat fund of up to £100 million to help "stimulate a transformative, sustained and measurable reduction in water demand nationally, using a range of water efficiency approaches". Ofwat's consultation is the first of two, which seek stakeholders' feedback on the fund's process, scope and monitoring.

MOSL has published its response, which sets out support for the new fund and the increased commitment to delivering innovative and transformative water-saving solutions across household and business customers.

In our response document, we urge Ofwat to retain a relentless focus on the need to reduce water consumption and use water more efficiently in light of national water scarcity challenges and newly introduced demand reduction targets. Other headline messages from our response include:

• We would welcome an additional objective that specifies ‘cross-market collaborations’ to ensure that water companies are working together effectively, and openly, with retailers to deliver water-saving opportunities for NHH customers
• We encourage Ofwat to set clear criteria for how learnings from trials and pilots can be applied effectively to ensure both the industry and its customers can benefit in the longer term
• We very much support the rollout of smart meters across both household and NHH customers, which are essential to understanding water use
• We agree on the importance of ensuring that the industry adopts a common approach for the collection, storing, structure and accessing of data and note the work underway by MOSL and the Strategic Panel to develop a data interoperability standard for smart meter data
• We would welcome initiatives that seek to define a common approach to segmenting customers by industry or water usage profiles as this will be key to understanding and applying learnings nationally and scaling up innovation
• We do not support segmenting the fund geographically. As we face national water scarcity challenges it is important that we develop national solutions that can benefit all customers and regions
• We feel strongly that it should not be a requirement for water companies to be involved in initiatives. If Ofwat is seeking to encourage expertise from other sectors, disciplines, and new approaches, it should not restrict the fund in this way

Further points are included within the full response document. If you have any questions on the response, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..