Scottish Water CEO: We must heed underinvestment lessons from England

The chief executive of Scottish Water has defended the organisation’s need to continue with its ambitious investment programme, despite bill increases.

Alex Plant, former regulatory director at Anglian Water, said the publicly-owned water provider could learn from the rest of the sector that deferring investment would significantly impact service levels.

Speaking to the Scottish Parliament’s net zero, energy and transport committee, Plant shared his key lesson he could apply from his time working at water companies in England. “We need to keep ahead of the investment curve to maintain both environmental standards and drinking water quality standards in the face of more complex climate challenges,” he said.

Plant pointed to “insufficient investment for a number of years” in England, the consequence of which has led to a deterioration of service quality.

To make up for “lost time” from that period of underinvestment, Plant said, proposed bill increases averaging 29% are set out in business plans of English and Welsh water companies. But, he said, Scotland has the opportunity to avoid this situation and the “cliff-edge increases” in bills providing it does not itself underinvest.

“Customers in England have somewhat lost faith in the system of water provision, which is sad,” Plant said. “In Scotland we have an opportunity to not find ourselves in that position. We have to focus as hard as we can on delivering the service quality and that investment programme is keeping pace with the changing climate.”

Last year, the company sought to raise water charges by 11% for households however the board took the decision to limit that to a 5% rise in recognition of the cost of living crisis. Plant explained that delaying higher bill increases left Scottish Water with £500 million less to deliver all the necessary projects and services across a six-year investment period.

In its work accordingly, the chief executive admitted the company will not be able to deliver everything it set out to at the beginning of the strategic review period.

“If you keep deferring [bill increases], the problem becomes bigger each time it’s deferred. We have to balance the needs of the current generation with the needs of future generations,” he said.

A decision about annual charges will be taken by the board later this year. Chair Susan Rice said this would not amount to “huge increases” but something more significant than recent years, perhaps “equivalent to a cup of coffee a week”.

Plant warned that not investing would have “significant impacts on service quality for customers and communities across Scotland” and stressed to the committee “to be wary of further deferring on necessary investment”.

The company is working to install 1,000 monitors on combined sewer overflows across its network to reduce the risk of harm from overflows. These will be added to most sensitive water environments and designated bathing sites by the end of 2024. Plant said more could be added should they be required in the future.

As well as CSO monitoring, sensors are being rolled out in the sewer network to alert operators of blockages developing in pipes. Detecting and removing these before they cause blockages will reduce pollution risks, chief operating officer Peter Farrer explained to the committee.

He also renewed the plea for wet wipes containing plastics to be banned and for unhelpful labelling to be removed from packaging.

“They biodegrade in years, but blockages happen in a matter of weeks so it’s not a helpful label,” he added.

Wipes are the primary cause of 36,000 sewer blockages that lead to dry spills from CSOs, which the company deals with each year.