Business Plan 2025-2030

Our Business Plan 2025-2030

Our Business Plan represents a major step up in investment over the next 5 years, which reflects not only important business objectives, but also the improvements our customers want to see.

The Business Plan for 2025-2030 outlines our commitment to deliver record investment, allowing us to make significant improvements to the services we provide to our 3 million customers throughout Wales and parts of England.

Business Plan 2025-30

Our most ambitious Business Plan

The water industry in Wales and England works in 5-year cycles and our latest Business Plan covers 2025-30. We have been working on this Plan with regulators, stakeholders and customers for the last few years.

We have been challenged to ensure that it is;

deliverable: we need to ensure that we have the resources to deliver all the investment schemes that are contained in our Plan
affordable: we need to make sure as many customers as possible can afford to pay their bills, and help out those who can’t
financeable: we rely on the financial markets to raise money to help fund our investment, so the Plan needs to be credible

Our investment plans for 2025-30 represents our most ambitious ever Business Plan, with a major step up in investment from the last five years, including:

£4 billion

investment in services (planned capital expenditure)

£2.5 billion

billion to protect and improve the natural environment

£73 million

to support customers on the lowest incomes who struggle to pay their bills

This Business Plan was informed by customer research to ensure that we have a good understanding of customer needs and priorities and reflects your views and preferences.

81% of Welsh Water customers described the Plan as ‘acceptable’.

Investing

over £2 million a day

We invest over £2 million a day in maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure that supports the services we provide, with thousands of miles of pipes, and hundreds of treatment works and pumping stations.

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Our vision is simple

To earn the trust of our customers, every day

Over the last 15 years on average, bills have not risen in line with inflation. We are now at a point where, if we are to ensure we continue to provide sustainable services and mitigate risks such as those presented by climate change, we need to increase investment in our water and wastewater infrastructure.

All of this provided for an average household charge of

£

1.75

per day

Aerial view of Pontsticill Reservoir on a clear and sunny day.

Our ambitions are clear

Future Generations

Our Business Plan shows the kind of company we want to be, and the service we will provide, now and in the future.

With no shareholders, we can plan ahead for the long term without worrying about paying short-term dividends.

Our long-term mission is “to deliver a world-class, resilient and sustainable water service for the benefit of future generations.” This has never been more important given the challenges we see all around us.

Although we are not a public body, we act in accordance with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, and our Plan supports the seven Well-being Goals.

This Business Plan is the next step in towards meeting our goals of a sustainable and resilient service for 2050 and beyond. That means responding to the challenges we anticipate in the world around us, taking advantage of innovation and technology to deliver a better value service, and ensuring we are not imposing a burden on the next generation.

For Wales

As one of Wales’ largest companies, we have a responsibility do our very best for Wales and its people.

The challenges that we face are complex, other sectors including agriculture, industry, the public sector and regulators all have a part to play.

We support a ‘Team Wales’ approach, meaning that those with shared objectives work together effectively to improve the environment and the communities we serve, at both the national and local level.

We are committed to playing our part.

Our challenges

We operate in an area that poses a unique set of challenges for us as a water company.

Three orange icons depicting a group of people.

Population

Our population is highly dispersed in rural areas, meaning more kilometres of pipes and more treatment works per customer. Our water network, dominated by upland reservoirs and gravity-fed systems, means water mains working under very high pressure, making them more vulnerable to bursts.

Forest green icon depicting money in note form.

Prices

Over the last twenty years customers have seen broadly stable water bills in real terms, but the increased level of investment needed in 2025-30, along with the higher cost of financing, means that household bills will need to rise over the next few years. We have an additional challenge, and we have the third highest poverty rate of all water companies as measured by the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), a measure of the proportion of income deprived households. This makes our customers more susceptible on average to increases in the cost of goods and services.

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SAC Rivers

There are nine river Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) in Wales, more than is found in most water companies areas in England. These are ecologically sensitive and important rivers, home to some of Wales' most special wildlife like Atlantic salmon, freshwater pearl mussels, white-clawed crayfish and floating water-plantain. We also have more WFD river waterbodies than in found in other companies operating areas, and all are vital to their local environment. Protecting river water quality from the impacts of human activity is crucial to the functioning of the river systems and the wildlife they support.

Blue icon depicting planet earth, in particular the United Kingdom

Climate change

The impacts of climate change on our operating area are becoming increasingly apparent. In Wales and other western parts of the UK, the main concern is the increase in the frequency and intensity of rainfall, which has major implications for drainage in general and the operation of our wastewater network in particular. In addition, such extreme weather events can also impact on the drinking water services we provide as recently evidenced by the flooding of Tynywaun Water Treatment Works in south Wales in November 2024, resulting in a precautionary boil water notice being issued to 12,000 households.

Our Plans

Read our Plans for 2025-2030

To read the plans in more detail, this link includes all of the plans we submitted to our regulator in 2024.

Stepping up to the challenge

Our Business Plan 2025-2030