Water UK

Overview

The statistics are impressive: the industry supplies services to more than 20 million properties – the vast majority of the UK’s population; it has a turnover of more than £7 billion a year; and assets which include 1,000 reservoirs, over 2,500 water treatment works and 9,000 sewage treatment works. More than 700,000 kilometres of mains and sewers are buried beneath the ground – that’s enough to stretch to the moon and back, or a distance 200 times greater than the UK’s entire motorway network.

The water industry is financially and operationally much bigger than many people recognise. It invests more than £3 billion a year in England and Wales and directly employs more than 27,000 people; indirectly it provides jobs for many more, in activities as diverse as construction, environmental consultancy, plant engineering and information technology.

Organisation

Scotland has a single water authority, Scottish Water, created in April 2002 from the three former public water authorities - North of Scotland Water, East of Scotland Water and West of Scotland Water. It supplies water and wastewater services to the whole of Scotland. Scottish Water is answerable to the Scottish Executive but is structured and managed as a private company.

Services in Northern Ireland remain in the public sector. The Water Service is an Executive Agency within the Department for Regional Development, which was given responsibility for water and sewerage in 1996, following local government reorganisation.

In England and Wales water services are provided by the private sector. Ten privatised companies deliver both water and sewerage services, while 15 water supply companies provide drinking water to their customers. The water service companies were created in 1989 by the privatisation of ten public-owned water authorities. The water supply companies have always been in the private sector, and many date back to the Victorian era.