Empowering Customer Water Reuse
How might we equip regulators and water companies with practical, reusable tools to build early public trust and confidence in water recycling schemes, reducing late-stage delivery risks and enabling smoother project outcomes?
Research shows most people support using recycled water to supplement drinking water supplies in principle. However, this does not always translate into acceptance of major projects where trust in developers, regulators, or delivery arrangements is weak.
Clear, neutral language around water scarcity and purification is critical. Standards, monitoring, and decision‑making processes must be independent, transparent, and visible. People need confidence that the process is safe and that strong regulation is in place to ensure standards are met.
The challenge is to build that trust and confidence earlier in the process, reducing the risk of resistance or delay at later stages of scheme delivery.
During this sprint, participants will:
- Map where household and public confidence is won, weakened, or lost along the delivery pathway
- Prioritise what regulators and water companies can do earlier to make safety, standards, monitoring, and decisions easier to understand
- Use behavioural insight to test which facts, frames, proof points, and trusted voices matter most to the public
- Develop practical outputs that can be tested across major water recycling projects at the pre‑planning stage
Participants will collaborate through a structured sprint, including:
Problem‑definition session (from 3pm the day before):
- Shared problem definition
- Mapping where lack of trust and confidence hardens into opposition
- Reviewing evidence on household attitudes and behaviour
- Agreeing key design questions
- Supported by advance briefing materials and short video inputs
Sprint day activities:
- Playback and refinement of the confidence map
- Development of solutions through mixed‑group collaboration
- Table critique and prioritisation of ideas
- Co‑development of potential outputs
- Stress‑testing ideas against public and stakeholder archetypes
- Agreement of next steps
By the end of the sprint, we aim to deliver:
- A monitoring, validation, and public reporting approach
- A reusable technical evidence pack for water recycling schemes
- A public assurance toolkit (including visuals, robust FAQs, and neutral explainers)
- A household acceptability and behavioural insight map
- A follow‑on pilot plan for testing across schemes
- A potential regulator‑company assurance framework
We are looking for a diverse range of participants, including:
- Regulators and technical experts
- Consumer, community, and public health organisations
- Behavioural insight, public dialogue, and communications specialists
- Companies progressing water recycling schemes
- International experts with relevant experience
Note: This is a forum for co-designing regulatory, technical and communications solutions. It will not discuss live planning applications, possible alternatives, or wider debates about need.