As we enter 2026, the UK water sector is at a point where reflection alone is no longer enough.
2025 was a year of scrutiny. Public confidence continued to erode, delivery pressures intensified, and the Independent Water Commission brought welcome focus to questions many across the sector have been raising for some time: about governance, capability, accountability, and whether the current system is equipped to meet what society now expects of it.
This was not about blame. It was about reality.
The Commission’s work reflected a growing consensus across utilities, the supply chain, regulators, and policymakers that the challenge facing the sector is no longer just what we want to achieve, but how the system is organised to deliver it.
AMP8 is not simply an investment cycle. It is a test of whether the sector can operate with the pace, coordination, and resilience the next decade will demand.
What 2025 made clear
One message came through consistently in conversations Future Water convened during the year, including our engagement around the Commission’s call for evidence:
- Delivery is becoming more constrained by system design than by intent
- Skills and capability are now critical delivery risks
- Innovation adoption remains harder than it needs to be
- Fragmentation across standards, procurement, and governance creates friction and delay
- And the gap between public expectation and visible outcomes continues to widen
These are not marginal issues. They sit at the heart of trust, affordability, and environmental performance.
From conversation to practical change
Future Water exists to help the sector confront these realities constructively — and to do something about them.
Over the past year, we have increasingly organised our work around eight mission-led groups, each focused on a pressure point where the system needs to function better if outcomes are to improve:
- Standards & Regulations – supporting clearer routes to compliance and market entry
- Leakage – focusing on deployable, scalable solutions
- Metering – advancing data-led water efficiency and customer outcomes
- Digital & Cyber Resilience – recognising that resilience is now as important as digital progress
- Emerging Talent – addressing the skills challenge at its root
- Development Services – tackling the growing strain at the interface between housing growth and water
- Insights – building a shared, evidence-based view of sector performance
- IP & Innovation, including Water Dragons – helping close the gap between innovation and adoption
These groups are not abstract forums. They exist to reduce friction, improve alignment, and support delivery across the system.
A sector that benefits from a shared view of itself
One of the risks facing complex infrastructure sectors is mistaking activity for progress.
That is why Future Water is publishing UK Water Sector Report Card 2.0 in early 2026 — a shared, evidence-led snapshot of where the sector is performing well, where challenges persist, and where delivery risks are emerging.
It is designed to support better conversations, better decisions, and better alignment across the system.
Later in the year, our Transformation White Paper will build on this, moving the discussion beyond general references to digitalisation and innovation, and towards what transformation means in practice: changes to how systems, standards, data, behaviours, and incentives work together.
What 2026 needs to be about
The sector does not lack ambition or expertise. What it needs now is:
- Greater alignment between policy, regulation, and delivery
- Clearer routes from innovation to implementation
- Stronger focus on skills and capability
- And more consistent accountability for outcomes, not just plans
These themes sit squarely at the heart of the Independent Water Commission’s findings — and they will define whether AMP8 delivers what it promises.
A final reflection
Public trust in the water sector will not be rebuilt through messaging alone. It will be rebuilt through visible, sustained performance.
That requires honesty about what is working, openness about what is not, and a willingness to adjust how the system operates.
2025 helped clarify the challenge.
2026 must be the year the sector starts responding to it in practical, coordinated ways.
Future Water will continue to play its part — convening, connecting, and constructively challenging — to support a water sector that is more resilient, more capable, and more trusted by the society it serves.
Paul Horton, CEO
Future Water Association