Infrastructure investment plan 2015: 2016 progress report

Water

On the 1 April 2015, Scottish Water began to deliver the investment requirements for the 2015-21 period as directed by Minister on the 1 October 2014 ^[1] . The Outputs Monitoring Group is carefully monitoring the delivery of the improvements in line with Scottish Waters delivery plan ^[2] and quarterly reports are published on the Scottish Governments website.

In the current regulatory period 2015-21, Scottish Water will invest £3.6 billion in Scotland's water and wastewater services. Scottish Water reported for the financial year 2015-16 that £479 million capital investment has been made and in doing so had delivered a significant contribution towards a number of the Government's key strategic objectives. This investment enabled it to: deliver better services to customers; improve drinking water quality; provide additional capacity to meet the demands of new housing; reduce leakage; and protect Scotland's environment.

Examples of improvements are:

• leakage has been reduced by a further 44 million litres a day. Overall leakage is half what it was in 2006;
• levels of customer service is now amongst the best in the UK; in 2009-10, Scottish Water ranked amongst the worst;
• environmental compliance has improved significantly over the last five years with significant reductions in numbers of pollution incidents. In 2015-16 there were 257 pollution incidents compared to 939 in 2009-10;
• drinking water quality has improved steadily. In 2015-16, 99.93% of the 318,000 samples taken met strict quality standards; and
• Scottish water procurement procedures were described as world class by the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply and they gained Platinum accreditation status.

Investment Pipeline

Scottish Water's investment programme is defined and funded for the period 2015-21. The investment programme is set out in the form of Ministerial Directions and a supporting Technical Expression in the form of a list of outputs.

Scottish Water's Delivery Plan sets out how Scottish Water intends to deliver the investment over the five year period. The current period ends on 31 March 2021.

The Strategic Review of Charges undertaken by the Water Industry Commission for Scotland was completed on 20 November 2014 when it published its Final Determination of Charges ^[3] . This determined the amount that customers need to pay in order deliver the necessary improvements to services. It confirmed the agreement that the Customer Forum ^[4] had negotiated with Scottish Water on behalf of customers on prices and levels of service represents the lowest overall reasonable cost for customers. The agreement concluded that household charges should not rise by more than the Consumer Prices Index less 1.8% over the six-year period.

The 2015-21 investment plan contains many thousands of projects. Key projects to be delivered in the 2015-21 include:

• major upgrades to Glasgow's sewerage networks including the 3.1 mile long Shieldhall tunnel and Wastewater Treatment Works at Daldowie and Dalmarnock Wastewater Treatment Works part of £250 million 5 year programme; and
• improvements to drinking water quality in Ayrshire including the construction of a new 30 mile long water main.