Our Compliance, Monitoring and Enforcement Strategy

What the CME sets out 

• What we’re targeting: The most persistent risks to public health – contamination from chemicals or microorganisms (e.g. bacteria, viruses and protozoa like Cryptosporidium) – and supplies that lack basic or effective treatment to remove them.  

• Suppliers’ critical role: To address these risks we’ve provided tailored expectations for council suppliers; central government and commercial suppliers; and community suppliers – as well as a dedicated sector plan for schools that supply their own water. 

• How we’ll act: We remain committed to operating in a way that is proportionate, transparent, proactive and risk-based – in practice, this looks like us providing support where needed and taking appropriate compliance action to safeguard public health when risks aren’t being adequately managed. 

It’s likely that some suppliers will already be meeting (or exceeding) CME expectations. We encourage these suppliers to actively foster a culture of drinking water safety. One way they can do this is by proactively and openly sharing their knowledge, insights and good practices with other suppliers. 

I’m a drinking water supplier – what do I do now that you’ve released a new CME? 

To start, we encourage you to get to know the CME and what it means for you 

1. If you haven’t already, take a look at the latest Drinking Water Regulation Report 2024 to understand the issues that have informed the CME.  
2. Read the Compliance, Monitoring and Enforcement Strategy 2025-28 and related questions and answers. 
3. Consider which of the three supplier groups you fit in and reflect on what the CME means for you. 
   • Do you manage a self-supplied school or kura drinking water supply? Read this dedicated sector plan, which provides tailored expectations for you. 
   • For everyone else, here is a helpful resource for each of the three supplier groups.  
     • Expectations for council suppliers. 
     • Expectations for central government and commercial suppliers. 
     • Expectations for community suppliers. 
4. Plan and take action to meet the expectations for your group for each of the next three years. 
5. Keep the supporting CME materials that relate to you in mind as you go about the critical work of providing safe water to communities into the future. 

Join us at the Water New Zealand conference for a deep dive into the CME 

We’ll be attending the Water New Zealand Conference and Expo 2025 in Ōtautahi │ Christchurch in September. There we’ll:  

• present on the CME  
• have team members on hand at our shared stall with the Commerce Commission to talk with you about the CME and answer your questions. 

Following this conference, we plan to hold online sessions for those who were unable to join us in Christchurch.  

Until then, if you have CME-related questions please contact us.  

Expectations for self-supplied schools and kura

In 2024, more than half of laboratory notifications of E. coli detections (indicating faecal contamination) were from self-supplied schools.  

As part of our suite of CME documents, we have produced a dedicated sector plan for self-supplied schools.  

This plan:  

• is focused on improving the drinking water safety practices of those who manage these supplies  
• responds to a key risk identified in our latest Drinking Water Regulation Report for 2024, which highlighted unacceptable levels of contamination in these supplies.  

The Ministry of Education are undertaking a programme of critical drinking water safety improvements over the next 12 months aimed at: 

• carrying out critical safety upgrades to get basic drinking water treatment barriers in place and working effectively  
• continued drinking water quality monitoring to ensure any instances of contamination are promptly identified and addressed. 

We will monitor progress as:  

• these long-standing, critical drinking water safety issues are resolved over the next 12 months  
• wider actions are undertaken over the subsequent two years to improve overall drinking water safety at self-supplied schools.

Bite-sized supporting materials   

These supporting materials aim to help make it easy for suppliers to keep the CME in mind as they go about the critical work of planning and providing safe water to their communities.  

These can be printed as standard A4 size or A3 size for posting on the wall. 

Expectations by supplier group 

• Expectations for council suppliers 
• Expectations for central government and commercial suppliers 
• Expectations for community suppliers 

General information 

• Four key risks to safe drinking water 
• Our regulatory approach 

Page updated: 10 July 2025