The Innovation Platform spoke with Tim Wagstaff, Principal and Water Efficiency and Innovation Lead at Ofwat, about the Water Efficiency Fund and the innovative solutions to understand and reduce water consumption
As water consumption rises and climate change increases pressures on our water resources and infrastructure, the importance of effective water management becomes evident. To address these challenges, Ofwat established the Water Efficiency Fund and Lab, which aim to promote innovation and encourage behavioural changes that support sustainable water use. The initial phase of this £25m initiative, which includes five contests, has recently concluded. In June 2026, the Water Efficiency Lab announced the winners of the first round of funding, awarding a total of £5.2m to seven projects designed to help households and businesses reduce their water consumption.
To learn more, The Innovation Platform spoke with Tim Wagstaff, Principal and Water Efficiency & Innovation Lead at Ofwat, about the Water Efficiency Fund, the winning projects, and how we can address the pressures of ensuring a reliable water supply while encouraging responsible consumption practices.
Can you provide an overview of the Water Efficiency Fund, including its inception and objectives?
In response to industry consultations highlighting the need for additional steps to foster innovation and insights within the sector, Ofwat established the Water Efficiency Fund, a £100m programme aimed at significantly reducing water demand across England and Wales. Near the end of 2025, we launched our first competition focusing on actionable insights and further supporting initiatives to reduce water demand.
The fund consists of two complementary parts:
- The Water Efficiency Lab – A £25m challenge-led, water efficiency innovation competition, with £5m available each round, dedicated to fostering innovation and exploring new approaches to reducing water demand in both homes and businesses, catering to a wide range of properties, sectors, and individuals.
- The Water Efficiency Campaign – an evidence-based, audience-led behaviour change campaign to help everyone across England and Wales use less water through small, everyday changes. The ‘Let’s Save Water’ campaign has recently launched.
Together, these initiatives hope to significantly decrease water demand and promote responsible consumption across England and Wales.
What are the current problems facing the water sector? Given the projected shortfall of 5 billion litres of water per day by 2055 in England, what long-term impact do you foresee if the current water consumption patterns do not change?
Climate change, the need to protect our environment, and economic ambitions are placing increasing demands on our existing water systems. In England, we’re using water faster than nature can replace, and in Wales the changing climate is putting pressure on our water supply. While infrastructure can be upgraded and systems repaired, it is crucial to manage demand and become more water-efficient to avoid the projected shortfall and ensure a sustainable water supply.
Although there are opportunities to reduce demand, implementing them through existing means can be challenging. The idea behind the Water Efficiency Lab was to address the gap between innovative water-saving ideas and their proven scalability, providing a pathway for the industry to secure funding for ideas and support scaling to meaningfully reduce water demand.
What do the selected projects aim to achieve?
Through a variety of approaches and technologies, each of the selected projects is testing a real-world solution to provide people and businesses with understandable, actionable insights about their water use and incentivise behaviours that save water and reduce demand.
Laundry Behaviours Lab
One project is the Laundry Behaviours Lab, which aims to identify the motivations behind more water-efficient laundry practices and to go beyond the basics of laundry to discover new solutions and opportunities for improvement.
Many people tend to overlook their laundry habits, but the Lab intends to understand how we interact with our washing, investigating the motivations behind common laundry behaviours, such as washing less frequently or running fuller loads.
The lab conducts qualitative research with 100 households to gather insights that could lead to evidence-based messaging. This messaging could be used by the Water Efficiency Campaign or water companies to guide everyday decisions that often lack clarity. For example, is the ‘eco-mode’ the best setting for all loads?
Helping Homes Save Water Outdoors
The Healthy Homes Initiative, led by the Royal Horticultural Society, considers how outdoor and garden spaces can contribute significantly to water demand – especially during the summer. The challenge lies in understanding how water is used in these spaces, identifying patterns, and building a playbook that communicates clear messages to help customers manage peak water demand.
By addressing these issues before droughts occur, we can mitigate the impact of dry spells, reduce demand, and improve long-term sustainability. This way, we minimise the need for urgent messaging or actions during dry periods since we will already be implementing effective water-saving practices.
The WIN Initiative
Spearheaded by Quensus, the WIN Initiative will deploy over 1,000 sensors across 30 commercial buildings to tackle significant water loss from leaks. The project also explores linking water efficiency with insurance incentives, potentially transforming water conservation from a voluntary effort to a financially beneficial practice for building owners.
Workplace Water Wins
Workplace Water Wins is a collaborative effort involving Waterscan and various partners that has secured £677,000 to implement sub-metering across numerous pubs and supermarkets. The initiative aims to enhance water-use awareness by highlighting specific consumption areas, helping businesses reduce waste and promote sustainable operations.
MyWaterGPT
MyWaterGPT, funded with £860,000, is set to develop a tailored large language model specifically for the UK water sector. It is an AI-driven tool that aims to empower customers to inquire about their water usage in straightforward language, providing personalised feedback and actionable insights based on smart meter data, all while protecting user privacy.
Water Warriors
Aiming to integrate water education into primary school curricula, Water Warriors, led by the Water Research Centre, will engage students in various subjects to help them understand water’s role in their lives and motivate them to make informed decisions about water use at home.
The 50L Home England Pilot
Combining appliances, fixtures and everyday products, the 50L Home England Pilot, conducted by Northumbrian Water in collaboration with multiple partners, is exploring innovative water-saving technologies and behavioural insights within UK homes. By testing appliances that optimise water use, this project aims to demonstrate a potential 30-40% reduction in household water demand while enhancing residents’ quality of life.
How do you plan to track their progress and measure their success over time?
To ensure that selected bids fulfil their commitments, we will closely monitor each of the chosen projects. We have specifically employed Arup to conduct calls with the projects every six months, with the option to increase the frequency if necessary. This oversight aims to facilitate effective collaboration by asking the right questions and encouraging project owners to share their insights. Our approach is not about pointing out shortcomings; it’s about working together to achieve the best outcomes.
Furthermore, we are working with ICF to evaluate our overall performance with this fund and our approach. ICF will conduct an independent assessment of our decisions and the actions we’ve taken to drive progress, allowing us to pinpoint areas for improvement.
How do you balance the need for immediate water savings with the importance of sustainable long-term solutions, and what criteria were used to select the winning projects?
Achieving long-term water conservation needs a mix of strategies. We need solutions that can be implemented quickly, while also exploring ideas that challenge us for the future – identifying the next steps, whether they be barriers or opportunities.
This was integral to our assessment criteria. The primary goal was to promote innovation, move beyond existing solutions, and ensure that projects are effectively adopted. Too often, projects are completed, and reports are produced without gaining the attention they deserve. Therefore, our focus was on how these projects can be integrated into the existing programmes of water companies and activities of other organisations and businesses, leading to meaningful changes in water conservation.
Adoption was a significant factor in the Water Efficiency Lab 1 criteria. The winning projects have timelines ranging from one and a half to three years, presenting an exciting opportunity for continuous learning and insight throughout the project durations, rather than just at the end. This allows us to begin sharing insights with water companies and other stakeholders immediately, enabling them to adopt and utilise key findings as the projects progress.
Lastly, can you explain what a sustainable water sector could look like and what role the Water Efficiency Lab and Fund would play in that future? What are the long-term expectations for the Water Efficiency Fund beyond the first round of funding?
The goal is to create a sector that is willing to experiment, test, and learn quickly. Encouraging projects and companies to apply for funding and adopt new methods will ultimately set us up to meet the long-term targets set in the UK.
While water supply schemes will increase the available water, managing demand is one of the most impactful areas we can focus on in the next five to ten years. By encouraging innovative thinking, the Water Efficiency Fund and Lab aim to facilitate this and create more opportunities for success, benefiting both customers and the environment in a timely manner. For customers, this is a chance to take greater control over their water bills and gain a better understanding of their water usage and its environmental impact.
Our efforts will not end with Water Efficiency Lab 1 or even the upcoming Water Efficiency Lab 2, which launches on the 3rd of August and focuses on customer-side leakage. More competitions will be announced later in the year, and we are committed to learning from our experiences to continuously test, learn, and adapt, just as we expect innovators to do.
Find out more about the water efficiency lab here.
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