techUK Insight: The Independent Water Commission’s Interim Report

Ahead of its final publication later in the year, the Independent Water Commission (IWC) has this week launched its interim findings, setting out a critical diagnosis of the UK water sector’s deep structural, regulatory and infrastructure challenges. It outlines, with clarity and urgency, the scale of the systemic challenges facing England and Wales: degraded infrastructure, fragmented governance, low public trust, and a regulatory model struggling to keep pace with rising expectations. From a techUK perspective, however, it also illustrates a critical shortfall that has become familiar across infrastructure sectors: a strong diagnosis of structural problems, but a reform narrative still anchored in analogue thinking.

The IWC’s output does not lack ambition. It rightly identifies the need for cross-sector coordination, long-term investment signals, integrated regulation, and a renewed focus on resilience. These are essential pillars of reform. And yet the mechanisms outlined so far remain largely procedural rather than structural or systemic. The final report must show a clear understanding that the challenges laid out in the report are not only organisational, but also deeply technological.

Two sections in particular, Strategic Direction and Planning, and Infrastructure and Asset Health, deserve closer attention through a technology lens. This isn’t because they contain the most technical detail, but because they so clearly describe challenges that digital systems are uniquely placed to address.

Strategic Direction and Planning

The IWC presents a clear understanding of the need for integrated planning across sectors and geographies. It recognises that water does not exist in isolation from sectors such as agriculture, energy, transport, and development, and that planning should be done at a regional level that reflects natural systems such as river basins. It calls for greater clarity from government on national priorities, smarter sequencing of interventions, and more effective engagement with local authorities and other critical actors. The ambition here is substantial and well judged.

Yet despite this the recommendations for coordination are grounded in slow, uninspiring governance models. Such proposals include advisory groups, documentation and review cycles, reporting periods and milestone reviews. Whilst these are of course useful in the reform of a sector, the report does not set out what kind of digital infrastructure might be needed to make this multi-actor coordination work in practice.

This is a missed opportunity. The water sector urgently needs integrated platforms capable of supporting real-time data sharing, cross-sector scenario planning, predictive

modelling, and continuous monitoring. These are not technologies from the future – our members are using them across energy systems, transport networks and with local government. The output from the IWC describes a highly distributed, dynamic system of governance. This is exactly the kind of architecture that modern digital systems are designed to support.

Infrastructure and Asset Health

The same issues outlined above are just as prevalent in this section. Here, the Commission offers a particularly sharp diagnosis. Asset condition across the sector is poorly understood, especially given the scale and age of underground infrastructure. Maintenance is reactive and based on historic failures whilst there is no consistent national resilience framework. Regulators lack the engineering capability to challenge companies’ asset strategies and the cyclical nature of investment is limiting productivity.

Such a state of affairs requires large-scale digital transformation. These challenges are precisely those for which modern digital infrastructure was designed to overcome. Predictive maintenance, real-time monitoring, automated compliance, and digital mapping are already standard in other asset-intensive industries. These are the recommendations that the IWC should be forcing through clearly in their interim report.

In its final version, the IWC must call for a digital vision of the water sector’s infrastructure alongside new resilience measures to showcase performance against national standards. Regulators must be equipped with data to understand the state of affairs and create an environment of proactive and strategic change.

If the sector is to meet the infrastructure and climate challenges of the next 30 years, it will need to operate not only with better governance, but with a completely different relationship to data, automation, and digital tools. Human expertise will always remain essential, but it must be supported by systems that can process complexity at scale.

Looking Ahead

The Commission’s interim report sets out a compelling vision for reform. It places resilience, public trust and value, and long-term thinking at the heart of the water sector’s future. It reflects growing consensus that change is needed and that the status quo cannot continue. But the final report must fully embrace digital transformation as a foundational component of sector renewal and give more than just lip-service (there is just one mention of ‘digital’ within the report).

techUK believes there is still time for the final report to get this right. The water sector is at an inflection point. With the right digital infrastructure, it can become not only more resilient and efficient, but also more transparent, accountable, and trusted. A modernised water sector should not only be better governed; it should be smarter, faster, and more responsive.

Get Involved

techUK will continue to champion the role of digital technology in delivering a cleaner, more resilient, and better-governed water sector. As the Commission moves toward its final recommendations, we want to ensure that the voice of the tech sector, and the transformative potential of digital innovation, is fully represented in that conversation.

- The Climate Resilience Taskforce brings together members working across infrastructure, data, AI, and environmental monitoring to explore how technology can support national resilience goals.

- The Water Digitalisation Working Group is focused specifically on opportunities to modernise the water sector through smart infrastructure, IoT, asset management platforms, and data-driven regulation.

Climate, Environment and Sustainability Programme activities

The techUK Climate Programme provides opportunities for members to present tech solutions that assist carbon emission reduction, circularity, and human rights goals. We also help our members with their own net zero transition, including measurement, implementation, compliance, and reporting. Visit the programme page here.