Welcome to our consultation - we would like your feedback to help inform and develop our plans.
We are required to update our Drought Plans every five years, the first stage of this is to produce Draft Drought Plans. We submitted our Essex & Suffolk Water and Northumbrian Water draft Drought Plans 2027 to Defra on 31 March 2026 and received approval to publish to undertake a public consultation on 29 April 2026.
Our draft Drought Plans 2027 consultation was open for 12 weeks from 21 May 2026 to 13 August 2026. We are now considering all the comments we have received and will publish a Statement of Response, which will detail the changes we have made to our plan as a result of the feedback, along with our revised draft Drought Plan,
by 23 October 2026.
Subject to approval of our revised draft Drought Plans from the Secretary of State, our final Drought Plans will then be adopted and published.
Exclusions on the Grounds of National Security
Under Section 37B(10)(b) of the Water Industry Act 1991, as amended by the Water Act 2003 ("the Act"), the Secretary of State can direct companies to exclude any information from published drought plans on the grounds that it appears to him that the publication would be contrary to the interests of national security. No information has been excluded from this plan.