There is no single definition of drought, but all droughts involve an extended period of below normal rainfall. Whether a drought impacts the environment, customer water supplies or other water resources depends on the individual characteristics of each one. All droughts differ in severity, area covered and duration.
A few days or weeks of particularly hot and/or dry weather don’t count as a drought. Hot weather like this is classed as a heatwave, which can cause water companies short-term issues by drawing down levels in treated water reservoirs as demand for water suddenly rises. Events like this are too short-term to fall within the scope of this plan and are covered by our hot weather plans. Our drought plan is designed for periods of below normal rainfall which last at least two or three months.
It’s a statutory requirement for water companies to produce and maintain a Drought Plan and update them at least every five years. Our Drought Plan sets out how we’ll manage our resources and supply system in dry years, to maintain our service to our customers. Our plan aims to balance the interests of customers, the environment and the wider economy with the timings of our drought triggers and actions. The plan helps us and our stakeholders make the right decisions at the right time and shows how we will provide a continuous supply of drinking water to our customers during a drought.
Current Drought Plan
While developing our Drought Plan, we carried out a pre-consultation with our stakeholders in 2024, asking for feedback on our last plan and any ideas or concerns we may need to consider. Once we’d taken these points on board and updated other parts of the plan to reflect new guidance from our regulators, we published our draft plan and held a public consultation between January and March 2025. We reviewed the feedback received during the consultation and published a Statement of Response that detailed how we would address the comments and suggestions we received. We then updated our Drought Plan, gained permission to publish from the Welsh Government, and published our Drought Plan in December 2025.
We would like to thank everyone for their contributions throughout the update process, which has improved our final plan.
The documents are available to download below, or to read a paper copy in Welsh or English, please ask for them at our Packsaddle office reception on Wrexham Road, Rhostyllen, Wrexham, LL14 4EH.
We’ve completed a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), a Water Framework Directive (WFD) assessment, a Habitats Regulations Assessment (HRA) and an Environmental Assessment Report (EAR) for our drought plan to evaluate environmental impacts.
No information has been excluded from our Drought Plan on the grounds of commercial confidentiality. It does not contain any information that would compromise national security interests.
Get in touch
If you would like any further information or you have any questions, please contact us.