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a number of reasons, including an increasingly tough regulatory environ-
ment and cost comparisons by Ofwat as well as wider globalization and
corporate restructuring seen in the UK over the last decade or so. Pressure
on water resources and supply of water in the UK is growing all the time,
with population increase, increased numbers of houses and climate change
all contributing. New strategies examining how to increase sustainability
and maintain the supply of water are increasingly necessary. 11,12
11.1.1. Water safety plans
WSPs are the “most effective means of consistently ensuring the safety of
drinking water supply”. 13 The aim of WSPs is to ensure the continued
safety and acceptable level of the drinking water supply through use of a
comprehensive risk assessment and management approach that encompasses
all the steps of supply from catchment to consumer. 14 The development of
a WSP will involve numerous stages, including identifying all potential haz-
ards in the water supply from the catchment, assessing risk by each hazard
or hazardous area, considering control barriers for each risk, and reviewing
and evaluating both the hazards and control systems over time to improve
the plan if necessary. 14 WSPs should be approached carefully, and it should
be ensured that in addition to hazard identification and assessment, there
should also be a plan to examine all of the operations involved in water
supply, including management procedures such as training, communications
and reporting. 6
The UK regulator has been requiring water companies to implement
WSPs since the third edition of the WHO Guidelines for Drinking Water
Quality was published in 2004. Since then, a regulatory requirement has
been in place for all companies to undertake these risk assessments in the
UK. Companies were encouraged to undertake them with the knowledge
that future investment programs from the regulator would only support
them if they undertook efficient WSPs. The first set of formal risk assess-
ments for the water supply in England and Wales was submitted to the
DWI by the 1st of October, 2008. WSPs in the UK currently follow good
practice set by an already mature European water industry, but each plan
also needs to consider the effect of different locations as well as the size of
the supply; for example, smaller supplies are likely to be simpler to deal with.
In 2008, almost 800 risk assessment reports were submitted to the DWI
for a wide variety of treatment works and supply systems across England and
Wales, and these were then independently checked by the DWI to check
for any deficiencies. So far the application of WSP methodologies in the
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