Our commitments & plans

Bringing water to life – supporting the lives of people and the places they love for generations to come.

We want the South West to be the destination for water quality.

WaterFit outlines how we will play our part, working with partners, customers, visitors and local communities to protect and enhance the South West’s water for future generations.

There’s no doubt that improving river and sea quality has taken centre stage, as water-based recreation, such as wild-swimming and paddle boarding have become more popular, and the pandemic has strengthened the bond we all want to have with green and blue spaces, now and for generations to come.

Home to 860 miles of coastline and nearly four in every ten coastal bathing waters, we value and prioritise the water environment. We have worked tirelessly across the region to improve the bathing waters around the coastline, which now for the first time has achieved 100% water quality standards, with 99% achieving Good / Excellent.

 We know that we need to and can go further, faster.

Over 10 million visitors come to the South West every year, in addition to the 2.3m people that live in the region. We want the South West to be the destination for water quality.

WaterFit outlines how we will play our part, working with partners, customers, visitors and local communities to protect and enhance the South West’s water for future generations.

WaterFit will enable to us to deliver a step change in both river and coastal water quality:

• It will enable us to expand our 100% excellent bathing water quality standards all year round, allowing everyone to enjoy our 860 miles of coastline.
• We’ll also reduce our impact on river water quality by one third by 2025, reducing spills from storm overflows to an average of 20 per year per overflow, increasing capacity in our infrastructure to the equivalent of 20 Olympic swimming pools.
• We’ll target delivering zero serious pollutions by 2025, with year on year reductions in all pollutions.