Drainage Problems Present Existential Threat to Northern Ireland PLC…

It is no exaggeration to state that NI Water’s planned funding arrangements for the next three years will present an existential threat to our local construction and house building industry – and eventually to Northern Ireland Plc itself.

This week, at a meeting with senior managers at NI Water, I was told that the company, which delivers all our water supply and waste water infrastructure, will experience a funding gap of £145m over the next three years. This represents a deficit of £40m this year alone and will decimate their list of planned capital works projects with barely enough money left to maintain their existing assets.

This will have a devastating impact, not just on the construction industry, but also on the ordinary people hoping to buy a new home or move into social housing over the next few years. It could also prevent the expansion of local businesses or the building of a new school, hospital extension or other essential services. Every year the situation will get worse unless there is more investment in our critical drainage infrastructure.

It’s not that we haven’t been warned. Back in 2018 NI Water advised that the lack of funding was curbing development but, over the years, successive Executives have done nothing to address this problem.

In the short term, 19,000 homes in the planning pipeline will be without a drainage connection. NI Water say that 34 foul network UIDs, which are unsatisfactory intermittent discharges, across 23 towns in Northern Ireland are high polluting and will be closed for new drainage connections. We can all sympathise that NI Water faces severe environmental penalties if they permit new connections in these problematic areas, especially for green-field site developments, but that doesn’t solve the problem.

And what sort of message does this send to potential foreign investors hoping to build a new factory and create new jobs here?

It effectively means that many places across Northern Ireland will be closed for new business. This is neither sustainable, nor tolerable.

Other than a funding miracle arriving from the new Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, the options are fairly grim. For instance, no one seriously believes that funding will be diverted from our struggling health service to fund the public drainage network.

It is a sad fact that NI Water’s funding model is now broken. After years of inaction by the NI Executive it has failed spectacularly.

So, what are the options for those responsible like the Minister for Infrastructure, John O’Dowd?

Other than imposing hugely unpopular water charges, or raiding other Executive budgets, one of the few options available to Ministers in the short term is to reform the Water Industry’s legislation to allow Developers to group together to fund the upgrade of public drainage infrastructure. This change is required as, at present, there is no legislative mechanism for private companies to fund NI Water to complete essential upgrades.

It should be noted that at the recent debate in the NI Assembly I don’t believe there was any mention of new water legislation being required which is very unusual but please correct me if I am wrong.

Also, as the former Large Scale Renewable Generation Delivery Manager for Northern Ireland I know there is a precedent for private companies funding public infrastructure upgrades in the form of expanding the electricity network (although there were significant incentives in the renewables market at that time) and, therefore, this could easily be replicated in the water industry with new legislation. But, having said that, the housebuilding industry also needs encouragement to help address the current housing crisis.

Secondly, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (part of DAERA) and NI Water should amend their policy of discouraging Developers from constructing temporary (private) waste water treatment plants on their development sites where no public drainage connection is available. This would enable NI Water to avoid the additional costs of maintaining these public, or adoptable, treatment works whilst allowing the developer to build out the initial phases of their scheme.

But, let’s be honest, these solutions will not be popular with Developers as they are already struggling with high costs and will only pass any additional charges onto their customers but at least it would keep things moving and prevent Northern Ireland Plc from grinding to a halt.

Cllr Brian Pope is a Chartered Civil Engineer and a former councillor on Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council