Water companies in England are reportedly asking customers to pay for a record £96bn investment which will be used in fixing raw sewage leaks, building new reservoirs and cutting leaks.
The main water and sewerage companies want the regulator to approve their spending plans for 2025-30. They are expected to publish their individual investment strategies on Monday for Ofwat to examine but some details may be withheld from public scrutiny.
According to reports, Water UK, the industry body, said that the £96bn investment was a near doubling of current levels of money going into the privatised water system. The investment across the industry would create 30,000 jobs and 4,000 apprenticeships to help deliver improvements.
The increase in bills will vary across companies. Water UK said that the average bill was likely to rise by £7 a month by 2025. This is expected to increase to £13 a month, or £156 a year, in 2030.
The attempt to increase water bills to pay for the investment comes after Ofwat ordered the companies to pay customers back next year as a penalty because progress on leakage and sewage spills had been “too slow”. The regulator said that most water and wastewater companies were underperforming on targets set for 2020-25 to deliver better outcomes for customers and the environment.
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David Henderson, who is the chief executive of Water UK was quoted as saying that the record-breaking investment proposals will secure our water supply as we deal with a changing climate and a growing population.
“While increasing bills is never welcome, this investment in our country’s infrastructure is essential to ensure the security of our water supply. Water companies are seeking regulatory approval to reduce overflow spills into rivers and seas as fast as possible and to doubling the number of households receiving support to pay their bills.”
Water UK said that companies were more than doubling the number of households that were eligible to receive support with bills, to 3.2m, because they understood the impact of the cost of living crisis on families.
Meanwhile, the water companies say that their investment will pay for 10 new reservoirs to secure water supplies, cut leakage by more than a quarter by 2030 compared with the start of the decade, include £11bn spent to reduce raw sewage spills from storm overflows, which they say is the most ambitious modernisation of sewers since the Victorian era, and includes the creation of new nature-based schemes to manage rainwater and technology to better manage flows.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
