Water & Wastewater Treatment

10 | APRIL 2016 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk Events Call for clarity on future funding for NI Water N orthern Ireland Water needs clarity on its future funding if vital investment in infrastructure is to go ahead, its chief executive Sara Venning told the WWT Water Northern Ireland conference in Belfast. She said that, due to a lack of funding, the company had been unable to sign up to a medium-term plan – a key requirement for a regulated utility. "We agreed the first year of our programme of work as a one-year programme of work, and we're on the cusp of doing the same for year two," she said. "We all know that that's an inherently inefficient way to run a capital intensive business such as ours." The plan for PC 15, NI Water's third price control period, will help deliver lower bills, improve efficiency and drive customer service improvements, Venning said. She insisted NI Water is "up for the challenge" and is "very keen to get on with it", but the plan needs to be funded, and there needs to be recognition that more funding is necessary. "We all have a task to raise the profile and the importance of this as a priority for Northern Ireland," she said. "You can't have the nice things if you don't have the infrastructure, and we need to fund the infrastructure." "We're great at what we do," she added, "and we can deliver more for less if we're given the funding to move forward. Can we afford not to do that?" Venning recently appeared before the Regional Development Committee, where she said that NI Water's constitution as a government-owned company "hampers" its ability to deliver for customers and suggested it was "constrained" by public ownership. However, speaking at the conference she said: "What we need is clarity of funding and the freedom to operate efficiently. That can be achieved within public ownership – look at Scottish Water," said Venning. "We have a shareholder that needs to find the funds. All of us have a job to do to help ministers see that this is important." Later in the day, the conference heard from John Mills, Network Regulation Manager at the Utility Regulator, who spoke about investments to make the water sector more resilient. He said he was cautious about the over-use of the term, adding: "There's a risk that resilience becomes the catch- all reason for investment when we can't otherwise come up with a reason why it's needed." THE SPEAKERS "What we need is clarity of funding and freedom to operate efficiently… that can be achieved within public ownership." Sara Venning Chief Executive NI Water "We can use our own land ownership as an exemplar for the use of pesticides, and raise awareness on a wider basis through training." Andrew Walker Catchment Strategy Manager Yorkshire Water "If there's anywhere in the UK where we ought to be able to progress the 21st century drainage agenda quickly, it ought to be Northern Ireland." Tony Harrington, Director of Environment, Welsh Water Lois Vallely reports from Belfast "Beyond our big projects, we are now looking at more capital maintenance assessments working on a smaller scale." Martin McIlwaine, Interim Director of Asset Management, NI Water To take away 1. Northern Ireland Water needs greater certainty about its funding from the government in PC15, but this will not be forthcoming until Stormont elections are concluded in May. 2. The utility intends to integrate its asset management function with operations to form what it calls 'production lines' in water and wastewater. 3. With only 33% of NI watercourses rated good or better, there is some work to do on wastewater to achieve compliance with the Water Framework Directive. 4. The utility is investing resources in catchment management with a priority to keep pesticides such as metaldehyde out of rivers. 5. A simple ownership structure of drains in NI means there are fewer obstacles to implementing drainage projects than in the rest of the UK, so these should advance quickly in the coming years . NEXT EVENT WWT Water Ireland conference, April 18, Dublin. wwt-ireland.net

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