For Regulators, Market Bodies & Policy Stakeholders

The UK non-household water market is entering an important period of regulatory and market evolution.

Water companies are preparing for the next cycle of water resources planning. The wider sector is responding to Defra’s reform agenda, the move towards more integrated regulation, and increasing pressure around resilience, affordability, environmental protection, growth and long-term infrastructure health. At the same time, the business retail market is facing live questions around customer protections, market maturity, data sharing, smart metering, water efficiency and the practical role of retailers in helping customers reduce avoidable consumption.

This initiative is designed to give regulators, market bodies and policy stakeholders a grounded view of how those issues are playing out in practice.

The speaker panel and agenda examines the operational and market realities behind the policy objectives: how wholesalers forecast future non-household demand, how retailers engage business customers, how smart meter data flows through the market, how customer action is triggered, and how demand reduction can be measured without overclaiming.

Day One focuses on the strategic resilience and market-design questions: future business demand, data centres and high-growth users, drought resilience, forecasting uncertainty, utility-retailer coordination, customer incentives and how non-household water efficiency fits into wider resource planning.

Day Two focuses on operational delivery: smart meter data quality, the Smart Meter Read Hub, alert workflows, retailer engagement, continuous flow, leakage, customer response, benchmarking, savings verification and proof of impact.

For Ofwat and economic regulation stakeholders, the event provides insight into how market incentives, customer protections, retailer models and smart meter data are affecting the business retail market in practice.

For MOSL and market governance stakeholders, it offers a direct view of the operational challenges around data sharing, smart meter reads, retailer-wholesaler workflows, settlement implications and the customer journey after smart data becomes available.

For Defra and policy stakeholders, the event connects water resilience, economic growth, demand reduction and market design in a practical setting — especially around data centres, high-growth users and future non-household demand.

For the Environment Agency and water resources stakeholders, it explores how demand management, customer-side efficiency, drought resilience, local water stress and non-household forecasting can contribute to the wider resources planning picture.

For CCW and customer-interest stakeholders, it creates a forum to examine how business customers experience the market: what data they understand, what support they need, where engagement fails, and how protections, incentives and customer communication could work better.

The value is not in pretending that regulation, smart metering or market coordination have already solved non-household demand reduction.

The value is in bringing the right people together to test what is working, what remains difficult, and what practical changes could help the market move from fragmented data and uneven incentives towards more credible, measurable demand reduction.