The first joint report from the water industry's four regulators gives the clearest single picture yet of how companies are performing one year into AMP8. Look past the pollution headlines and it tells a sharper story about delivery: where it is happening, where it is not, and why.
The first joint regulator report shows most companies delivering their environmental commitments on time, with a delivery gap concentrated in a few, as AMP8's £104bn programme gathers pace.
The Drinking Water Inspectorate, Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales and Ofwat have published the first Water Industry Performance Insights report. For the first time, the four regulators have combined their evidence into a single view of drinking water quality, environmental performance and customer service across the 17 water companies in England and Wales, using data for the 2025 calendar year and the 2025-26 financial year.
The headline picture is mixed:
Drinking water quality remains among the best in the world, with 99.97% of tests meeting standards.
Internal sewer flooding has fallen by 43% in recent years.
There were 2,991 pollution incidents in 2025, 84 of them serious.
Companies completed 93.7% of required environmental improvement actions on time; 142 of 2,254 were not delivered.
The EA's Environmental Performance Assessment fell again, to 16 stars out of a possible 36.
Ofwat rates ten companies as good or on track, and seven as off track.
Pollution will dominate the coverage. But for anyone delivering the sector's investment programme, three findings stand out.
The first is that the delivery gap is concentrated. Of the 142 environmental improvement actions not delivered on time, 112 belong to one company: Thames Water, which completed 72.7% of its 410 actions. Southern Water missed 10 of 37 and SES Water 7 of 8. Most companies, including Anglian, Severn Trent, United Utilities, Wessex and Welsh Water, delivered every action on schedule; Severn Trent alone completed 817. In other words, the sector as a whole can deliver its programme. The problem sits in a handful of places.
The second is the regulators' diagnosis. The joint report says companies can make rapid progress through stronger operational grip and control, informed maintenance practices, improved asset management and a focus on outcome delivery. That is not a call for more money. It is a call for capability. And the report links it directly to the scale of what is coming: more than £104 billion planned for 2025 to 2030, which it says creates scope for faster delivery, better use of data and innovation. It adds that it is still early enough in the period for companies to turn plans into tangible progress.
The third is water resources. Long-term leakage reductions are welcome, but the regulators say all companies need to go further as pressure on supplies grows, particularly in drought. Several companies reported marked increases in total leakage last year, and household consumption is flat at 137.3 litres per person per day. Demand management and new supply are two halves of the same problem. That is the case the Major Water Infrastructure Programme, and its reservoirs, is built on.
The report is also a statement about how the sector will be governed. The regulators describe it as a first step towards the more integrated approach to regulation signalled by the UK and Welsh Governments, including the Water Bill, and say they are unanimous in wanting to rebuild public trust and support long-term investor confidence. Ofwat's Helen Campbell was blunt about the current picture: some companies have stepped up, but "poor performance continues in too many places".
The timing makes the Thames Water figures especially pointed. The company, which is under Ofwat's Turnaround Oversight Regime, has around £20.5 billion of investment to deliver this period, and has just appointed nine contractor teams to its £4 billion Major Projects Framework. Its record on environmental actions is the clearest measure yet of the ground it has to make up.
For Confluence, the most important word in the report is confidence. Confluence exists to build the sector's capability, and the confidence of investors and the public, that AMP8, the flood programme and the Major Water Infrastructure Programme can be delivered. The regulators have now put numbers on that question. The companies delivering on time show it can be done; the gap is between them and the rest. Closing it, through better asset management, data, and programme-level learning shared across companies, is exactly the conversation we will be having at Confluence, Manchester Central, on 3 March 2027.
The evidence is now in one place. So is the challenge.