The Water Services Regulation Authority, or Ofwat, is the body responsible for economic regulation of the privatised water and sewerage industry in England and Wales. Ofwat's main statutory duties include protecting the interests of consumers, securing the long-term resilience of water supply and wastewater systems, and ensuring that companies carry out their functions and are able to finance them.
Water supply is the provision of water by public utilities, commercial organisations, community endeavors or by individuals, usually via a system of pumps and pipes. Public water supply systems are crucial to properly functioning societies. These systems are what supply drinking water to populations around the globe. Aspects of service quality include continuity of supply, water quality and water pressure. The institutional responsibility for water supply is arranged differently in different countries and regions. It usually includes issues surrounding policy and regulation, service provision and standardization.
Sewage disposal regulation and administration describes the governance of sewage treatment and disposal.
Thames Water Utilities Ltd, trading as Thames Water, is a British private utility company responsible for the water supply and waste water treatment in most of Greater London, Luton, the Thames Valley, Surrey, Gloucestershire, north Wiltshire, far west Kent, and some other parts of England; like other water companies, it has a monopoly in the regions it serves.
Southern Water is the private utility company responsible for the public wastewater collection and treatment in Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, West Sussex, East Sussex and Kent, and for the public water supply and distribution in approximately half of this area. Some areas within the Southern Water region are supplied by a number of smaller water supply companies. Southern Water supplies an area totalling 4,450 sq. km. and serves 2.26 million customers.
Public water supply and sanitation in the United Kingdom are characterized by universal access and generally good service quality. Unlike many other developed countries, the United Kingdom features diverse institutional arrangements across its constituent parts:. In England and Wales, water services are primarily provided by privatized companies, while in Scotland and Northern Ireland, these services are managed by publicly owned entities. Each region's unique approach is explored in separate articles, while this article is devoted to some common issues across the United Kingdom.
Public water supply and sanitation in Germany is universal and of good quality. Some salient features of the sector compared to other developed countries are its very low per capita water use, the high share of advanced wastewater treatment and very low distribution losses. Responsibility for water supply and sanitation provision lies with municipalities, which are regulated by the states. Professional associations and utility associations play an important role in the sector. As in other EU countries, most of the standards applicable to the sector are set in Brussels. Recent developments include a trend to create commercial public utilities under private law and an effort to modernize the sector, including through more systematic benchmarking.
Costa Rica has made significant progress in the past decade in expanding access to water supply and sanitation, but the sector faces key challenges in low sanitation connections, poor service quality, and low cost recovery.
Water supply and sanitation services in Ireland are governed primarily by the Water Services Acts of 2007 to 2014 and regulated by the Commission for Energy Regulation. Until 2015, the relevant legislation provided for the provision of water and wastewater services by local authorities in Ireland, with domestic usage funded indirectly through central taxation, and non-domestic usage funded via local authority rates. From 2015, the legislation provided for the setup of a utility company, Irish Water, which would be responsible for providing water and wastewater services, and funded through direct billing. The transition between these models, and certain aspects of operation of the new company, caused controversy in its initial period of operation.
Water supply and sanitation in the Netherlands is provided in good quality and at a reasonable price to the entire population. Water consumption is one of the lowest in developed countries at 128 litres per capita per day and water leakage in the distribution network is one of the lowest in the world at only 6%.
Public water supply and sanitation in Scotland is characterised by universal access and generally good service quality. Water and sewerage services are provided by a single public company, Scottish Water. The economic water industry regulator is the Water Industry Commission for Scotland. It "promotes the interests of water and sewerage customers in Scotland by making sure that householders and businesses receive a high-quality service and value for money by setting prices, monitoring Scottish Water's performance and facilitating competition in the water industry". The environmental regulator is the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. Drinking water standards and wastewater discharge standards are determined by the EU.
Public water supply and sanitation in England and Wales has been characterised by universal access and generally good service quality. In both England and Wales, water companies became privatised in 1989, although Dwr Cymru operates as a not-for-profit organisation. Whilst independent assessments place the cost of water provision in Wales and England as higher than most major countries in the EU between 1989 and 2005, the government body responsible for water regulation, together with the water companies, have claimed improvements in service quality during that period.
Drinking water supply and sanitation in Egypt directly impact the country's public health, industrial developments, and agriculture. Egypt's water and sanitation industry is characterized by both achievements and challenges. Among the achievements are an increase of piped water supply between 1998 and 2006 from 89% to 100% in urban areas and from 39% to 93% in rural areas despite rapid population growth; the elimination of open defecation in rural areas during the same period; and in general a relatively high level of investment in infrastructure. Access to an at least basic water source in Egypt is now practically universal with a rate of 98%. On the institutional side, the regulation and service provision have been separated to some extensions through the creation of a national Holding Company for Water and Wastewater in 2004, and of an economic regulator, the Egyptian Water Regulatory Agency (EWRA), in 2006. Despite these successes, many challenges remain. Only about one half of the population is connected to sanitary sewers. Because of this low sanitation coverage, about 50,000 children die each year because of diarrhea. Another challenge is low cost recovery due to water tariffs that are among the lowest in the world. This in turn requires government subsidies even for operating costs, a situation that has been aggravated by salary increases without tariff increases after the Arab Spring. Furthermore, poor operation of facilities, such as water and wastewater treatment plants, as well as limited government accountability and transparency, are also issues.
A regional water authority, commonly known as a water board, was one of a group of public bodies that came into existence in England and Wales in April 1974, as a result of the Water Act 1973 coming into force. This brought together in ten regional units a diverse range of bodies involved in water treatment and supply, sewage disposal, land drainage, river pollution and fisheries. They lasted until 1989, when the water industry was privatised and the water supply and sewerage and sewage disposal parts became companies and the regulatory arm formed the National Rivers Authority. Regional water authorities were also part of the Scottish water industry when three bodies covering the North, West and East of Scotland were created in 1996, to take over responsibilities for water supply and sewage treatment from the regional councils, but they only lasted until 2002, when they were replaced by the publicly owned Scottish Water.
The three cities of Abu Dhabi Emirate within the United Arab Emirates – the coastal city Abu Dhabi itself as well as the inland oases Al Ain and Liwa – receive their drinking water supply entirely from desalinated seawater.
Water supply and sanitation in Greece is characterised by diversity. While Athens receives its water from a series of reservoirs, some of which are located 200 km away, some small islands are supplied with water from tankers. Greeks have suffered from repeated droughts, the most recent one occurring in 2007. The EU supported the construction of numerous wastewater treatment plants since the 1990s in order to achieve EU environmental standards. While the wastewater discharge of the biggest cities is now in compliance with these standards, some smaller towns still lag behind.
Water supply and sanitation in Turkey is characterized by achievements and challenges. Over the past decades access to drinking water has become almost universal and access to adequate sanitation has also increased substantially. Autonomous utilities have been created in the 16 metropolitan cities of Turkey and cost recovery has been increased, thus providing the basis for the sustainability of service provision. Intermittent supply, which was common in many cities, has become less frequent. In 2004, 61% of the wastewater collected through sewers was being treated. In 2020 77% of water was used by agriculture, 10% by households and the rest by industry.Charging for water used by agriculture has been suggested.
Water supply and sanitation in Japan is characterized by numerous achievements and some challenges. The country has achieved universal access to water supply and sanitation, has one of the lowest levels of water distribution losses in the world, regularly exceeds its own strict standards for the quality of drinking water and treated waste water, uses an effective national system of performance benchmarking for water and sanitation utilities, makes extensive use of both advanced and appropriate technologies such as the jōkasō on-site sanitation system, and has pioneered the payment for ecosystem services before the term was even coined internationally. Some of the challenges are a decreasing population, declining investment, fiscal constraints, ageing facilities, an ageing workforce, a fragmentation of service provision among thousands of municipal utilities, and the vulnerability of parts of the country to droughts that are expected to become more frequent due to climate change.
Water supply and sanitation in Nairobi is characterised by achievements and challenges. Among the achievements is the expansion of infrastructure to keep pace with population growth, in particular through the construction of the Thika Dam and associated water treatment plant and pipelines during the 1990s; the transformation of the municipal water department into an autonomous utility in 2003; and the more recent reduction of water losses – technically called non-revenue water – from 50 to 40%.
Water supply and sanitation in Georgia is characterized by achievements and challenges. Among the achievements is the improvement of water services in the capital Tbilisi where the water supply is now continuous and of good quality, major improvements in the country's third-largest city Batumi on the Black Sea where the country's first modern wastewater treatment plant now is under operation, as well as a general increase in access to drinking water in the entire country. Water and sewer tariffs remain affordable, with the private water company Georgian Water and Power (GWP) serving the capital being financially viable and profitable, while the public water company serving most of the rest of the country remains financially weak. The improvements were achieved after the Rose Revolution of 2004 when the government decided to reform the sector and to invest in it after many years of neglect.
