Over 65 property developers and social housing providers attended Welsh Water’s developer customer forums last week.
A key element of Welsh Water’s programme of engagement with its developer customers includes holding two events a year, called the developer forums. During COVID-19, these sessions were moved to online virtual events held on Microsoft Teams. For the first time since 2019, last week’s developer forums were held as two face-to-face events, one in Cardiff and one in Chester.
The developer forum involves updates on key customer priority areas, such as new regulation, improvements Welsh Water has made to its service and the encouragement of valuable feedback on how developer customers find the delivery of new water and sewerage infrastructure and connections.
This year topics ranged from an update on phosphates which is delaying new housing delivery and how we’re proactively working with other stakeholders to look at sustainable short and long-term solutions to the issue, how developer customers can make their new homes more water efficient, and how to manage sustainable drainage on development sites.
The Chester event also welcomed guest speaker Stephen Beauchamp, director at OTB, a specialist geotechnical and civil engineering company who worked with Chester West and Chester Council on its new surface water drain.
Feedback on the forum was positive, with 100% of attendees rating it as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’.
Ian Wyatt, Director of Business Customer Services at Welsh Water said: "We’re proud of our strong track record when it comes to engaging with our developer customers. It was refreshing to be able to hold our first physical developer customer events for the last two and a half years, and it was great to catch up with new and familiar faces. We'd like to thank all of those who attended and made the forums a success."