Ofwat to push hard on resilience, Green says

Ofwat plans to "challenge the sector quite hard" on resilience, director of analytics Colin Green told the Utility Week Live conference today (23 May).

Green underlined the importance of resilience in the round as AMP7 approaches as the regulator seeks to place the concept at the heart of the industry's thinking.

"Resilience is one of our key themes," he told delegates. "We will challenge the sector quite hard. We are looking for resilience to be embedded."

He said Ofwat was seeking to ensure that "not just the operational resilience but corporate and financial resilience is demonstrated" and to see that companies are "doing that in a way that links with the other things in the Price Review around affordability, delivering better services and innovation".

He added: "I think we have an opportunity for the sector to rebuild some trust and it's a matter of how we take it."

Green also made clear that the approach to resilience in PR19 was "not about setting performance commitments for the next five years", explaining: "We want is the longer-term framework around those performance commitments because they are very important to the future."

Utility Week Live is taking place on May 22-23 at Birmingham's NEC, and is the biggest annual exhibition for the UK utilities sector.