Water Quality and Standards

1 foreword

The availability of wholesome drinking water and the safe disposal of wastewater are crucial to public health and a clean environment. They are also central to the principles of environmentally and socially sustainable development. The Scottish Executive's Programme of Government recognises these facts and includes among its priorities improving the standards of urban wastewater treatment, increasing the level of investment in drinking water, and bringing Scotland's 60 designated bathing waters up to European standards.

Scotland's three water authorities have a central role to play in delivering the wider improvements in standards required to meet existing and impending EU standards. This represents an enormous challenge for them, reflected in the fact that in the three years to March 2002 they will be investing a record £1.7 billion in improving or renewing treatment works and underground infrastructure. The benefits of this investment will include:

• purer drinking water
• fewer burst mains and collapsed sewers
• cleaner beaches and bathing waters
• improved water quality for freshwater fish in rivers and for shellfish in coastal waters
• safe and sustainable disposal of sewage sludge
• lifting of restrictions on residential and commercial developments

To ensure that the water authorities deliver these improvements at the lowest cost to the customer, we have established the Water Industry Commissioner as the authorities' professional economic and customer service regulator. The first Commissioner will be Alan Sutherland, who takes up post today.

The Commissioner's remit is to promote the interests of the water authorities' customers. Among his duties is advising Ministers on the level of water charges over periods of several years. In the first instance, we have asked Mr Sutherland to prepare advice for the two years from 1 April 2000. For subsequent periods we shall ask for advice covering periods of up to five years.

In preparing his advice for each period, the Commissioner will need to know exactly what drinking water quality and environment protection standards the authorities are working towards and how much meeting them is likely to cost. The Scottish Executive intends to provide this information for each period in question in a Water Quality and Standards paper.

This is the first Water Quality and Standards paper. It is also the first such Scottish document to draw all this information together in one place. I welcome its publication as the start of a process that will ensure that the water authorities' customers and the Scottish water environment benefit from a modern and efficient water and sewerage service at the best possible price.

Sarah Boyack MSP
Minister for Transport and the Environment

1 November 1999