Ofwat names judges for its £5m competition to tackle leaks on the customer side

Ofwat has appointed seven independent judges for the second Water Efficiency Lab (WEL2), with Niki Roach as chair (Water Magazine). The £5m competition is looking for ways to prevent, predict, pinpoint or repair leaks within household and non-household properties. That is the part of the leakage problem that sits on the customer's side of the boundary, outside company networks.

1–1.5bn litres

Source: Ofwat via Envirotec ↗

What we know

• Awards: £150,000 to £1.5m each, from a total pot of up to £5m.
• Scope: pipes and fittings, internal plumbing, and external supply pipes within property boundaries.
• Delivery: the competition is run by Challenge Works, part of Nesta, with Arup and Isle Utilities. It is funded from Ofwat's £100m Water Efficiency Fund (Envirotec).
• Timing: applications opened on 3 August and closed on 20 October 2026 (CIBSE Journal). Winners are expected in April 2027.

Ofwat notes that companies have cut leakage from their own networks by around 40% since the mid-1990s. Without further action, England and Wales could face a shortfall of nearly five billion litres a day by 2055.

Background

Ofwat's figures put customer-side losses at up to 547 billion litres a year, costing households and businesses an estimated £1bn to £1.6bn a year. The public network loses almost 3 billion litres a day (Envirotec). At launch, Paul Hickey, managing director of Ofwat's RAPID unit, said a quarter of all water lost to leaks is lost in homes and businesses. The competition ties into the Environment Act target to cut personal public-network use from about 144 litres per person per day to 122 by 2038.

Insurers have a stake too. Escape-of-water claims cost UK insurers £1.25bn in 2024, almost three-quarters of it from household leaks (CIBSE Journal).

The first Water Efficiency Lab named seven winners in June 2026. They included Quensus's WIN Initiative, which received £495,000 to fit more than 1,000 sensors across 30 commercial buildings. That project targets the 10% to 30% of commercial water lost to leaks and continuous flow, and Aviva is looking at whether a water management standard could help building owners, including through insurance.

What we don't know yet

• How many bids WEL2 attracted, and from which sectors.
• How companies would scale winning solutions, given that repairs inside the boundary are normally the owner's responsibility.

What to watch

• WEL2 winners, expected in April 2027.
• Results from WEL1's commercial-building sensor trials.
• Whether retailers and wholesalers build customer-side leak detection into non-household services.