The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has today opened a consultation on the draft of its new guidance covering the water mergers regime. Unlike other mergers the CMA examines, the CMA’s role in water mergers is to assess whether the merger has a negative impact on Ofwat’s ability to make comparisons between water companies.

Updated Ofwat guidance to the water companies in England and Wales covering procedures for dealing with domestic customers in debt will enable them to make use of debt collection agencies which are not licensed by the Financial Conduct Authority - the FCA only regulates consumer credit debts. 

New analysis from the World Resources Institute (WRI) ranking 167 countries for water stress in 2040 shows that 14 of the 33 likely most stressed countries are in the Middle East - and suggests that drought and water shortages were contributory factors in Syria's civil unrest.

The Consumer Council for Water (CCWater) is warning that the cost of the Thames Tideway Tunnel scheme to Thames Water’s 5.3 million waste water customers must be kept to an absolute minimum.

Freely accessible online tools to enable sustainable and efficient water resource management are being developed by the €7. 7million+ EU-funded SWITCH-ON project.

The anaerobic digestion (AD) industry now delivers an electrical equivalent capacity (electricity and biomethane) of 514 megawatts across 411 plants in the farming, waste and water sectors - the AD sector has grown by over 600% outside of the water sector over the past five years.

Thames Water has announced that construction of the £4.2 billion Tideway Tunnel will start next year following the confirmation of independent investors to finance and deliver the scheme.

Ofwat has received the recommendations of the Abstraction Incentive Mechanism (AIM) taskforce established to consider how water companies can be incentivised to reduce their abstractions from environmentally sensitive water sources when river flows are low.