The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs has launched a new consultation on draft regulations to amend the Water Supply (Water Quality) Regulations 2016 - Defra intends to lay the draft regulations to update the current public and private drinking water regulations in late 2017.

The draft regulations apply to water undertakers and licensed water suppliers whose areas are wholly or mainly in England. Separate regulations will be made in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Defra wants to introduce a new risk assessment approach to protect drinking water supply whilst focussing sampling and analysis on the highest risks.

Introducing the consultation, Defra said that in the short term water companies may not want to implement the new risk assessment approach, saying:

“They may be motivated to protect their water quality performance measure with the Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat) and achieving risk assessment certification may take longer for some companies than others. However, it is envisaged that all water companies will eventually utilise the new risk assessment system. This is due to the savings that can be made through the reduction of standard monitoring samples being taken and submitted to DWI.”

Defra is seeking views on a number of issues, including whether it has correctly assumed that the new risk assessment approach will eventually be adopted by all water companies and if not, why is the approach not favoured.

The consultation has set out the estimated cost and saving implications for when the water companies decide to implement the new risk assessment system

To establish the appropriate processes within in-house laboratories and make appropriate changes to arrangements with contract laboratories Defra estimates that there will be an initial set up cost to of £20,000 for each company (which will be spread over 2 years) plus an additional £1,500 every year for maintenance.

If the proposed risk assessment approach had been in place for all water companies in 2015, Defra has  estimated that the total number of analyses for 2015 would have reduced from over 900,000 to about 100,000.

The consultation also covers proposed changes to the Private Water Supplies (England) Regulations 2016. Defra is taking the opportunity to remove the maximum amounts that local authorities can charge for the activities undertaken to fulfil their duties in respect of private water supplies, enabling full cost recovery in the future. Local authorities will also be given the powers to perform remedial work where there is a risk to health and a notice has not been complied with.

The requirement for a local authority to carry out a risk assessment for every private water supply in its area and review and update the risk assessment every 5 years will still apply. Its aim will still be to establish whether there is a risk of supplying water that would constitute a potential danger to human health.

Commenting on the cost implications, Defra said that comprehensive monitoring and analysis incurs significant costs, especially where a large number of parameters need to be considered and that risk based monitoring presents potential cost-saving opportunities. The Department has therefore assumed that all local authorities in England will adopt the new risk assessment approach even though there will be a cost involved in introducing it.

Of the 39,400 private water supplies in England, only 6,300 require a comprehensive monitoring programme. These are large private water supplies distributing more than 10m3 per day and any supplies, irrespective of volume consumed, that are part of a commercial or public activity.

Again, Defra wants to know whether it has correctly assumed that the new risk assessment approach will be adopted by all local authorities and if not, why would a comprehensive monitoring programme be favoured in preference.

During the first year of the new approach, local authorities will need to embed the new process into their private water supplies monitoring regime. Defra has estimated that with approximately 260 local authorities in England involved in private water supply sampling, this would equate to a total one-off cost to local authorities of £0.28m.

It is expected that the costs to laboratories to introduce a quality management system in accordance with EN ISO 17025 and to change the methods of analysis and the performance characteristics the samples are assessed against will be minimal. The expectation is that the minimal costs involved will be absorbed by the laboratories or, for local authorities that use water company laboratories, that the cost will be absorbed into the charges for public supply.

Defra is also proposing changes to level of fees for local authorities to recover the costs of carrying out their duties in respect of private water supplies from the owner/user of the private water supply.

A consultation last year established that for some local authorities the current maximum levels of fees, set in 2010, are now insufficient to cover the costs of undertaking mandatory sampling and analysis.To safeguard the functions local authorities perform Defra has therefore proposed that the maximum fee threshold be removed.

In anticipation of a revision to the fees, Defra have been engaging with local authorities to establish the facts and gather evidence to assess what a necessary and fair level of fees could be. The results indicated that, for some of the activities they perform, some local authorities would need to increase their charges beyond the current permitted maximum (with one decrease). If the proposed charges were to be applied in 50% of cases, Defra estimates that private water supply owners and/or users will incur an additional cost of approximately £1m per year, rising to £1.93m per year if the proposed charges are applied in all cases.

Deadline to submit responses to the consultation is 24 October 2017 – click here to access the consultation online.