The new national development plan provides for expenditure of £3 billion over the next seven years on water and sewerage infrastructure. This is three times the size of the expected outturn of £960 million for these services under the current NDP and will require a proportionately much greater contribution from the Exchequer because of the reduction in cohesion funding resulting from economic advances in recent years. Early in the new year I will be publishing a comprehensive water services investment programme which will set out in detail the areas and schemes that will benefit from this unprecedented level of spending.
The increased investment envisaged in the new NDP is an acceleration of the pattern of recent years which has seen spending on water and sewerage schemes increase by 50 per cent in 1999 over the 1998 figure, and to twice the 1996 level. Between 1994 and the end of 1999 over £960 million will have been spent on water and sewerage services which, even allowing for adjustments for inflation, is well in excess of the £605 million envisaged at the start of the national development plan 1994-99. Major water schemes completed between 1994 and 1998 have provided an increase in water treatment capacity nationally of 44 million gallons of water per day or the equivalent of providing an additional supply for over 812,000 persons.
The 1999 programme included 18 major public water schemes to commence construction this year at a cost of £61 million, a further 16 to continue construction at a cost of £79 million and 27 schemes worth £152 million to be advanced through planning. It also included 15 water conservation schemes with a total cost of just under £50 million – 14 of these are already underway.