PR24 settles the £104 billion question.

Ofwat issued PR24 Final Determinations on 19 December 2024 and the eleven English and Welsh water and sewerage undertakers are now operating inside a five-year regulatory framework that funds a £104 billion expenditure envelope. The settlement was extraordinarily contested.

Five companies were referred to the Competition and Markets Authority on 18 March 2025: Anglian Water, Northumbrian Water, South East Water, Southern Water and Wessex Water. Thames Water requested a CMA reference but agreed with Ofwat to defer the formal reference by up to 18 weeks while restructuring discussions continued.

For directors and senior PMs working across the water sector, the settlement is the single most important reference document for the period to 2030. PR24 funds the storm overflows programme, the WRMP24 + Strategic Resource Options portfolio, the leakage reduction trajectory, drought resilience, drinking water quality, biodiversity and Net Zero commitments. Customer bills have risen materially across most companies, the largest household bill increases in recent UK water industry history, and the political weather around water customer affordability has not abated.

The framework matters beyond the eleven undertakers. Construction firms, engineering consultancies, project finance houses, supply chain operators and HSEQA + sustainability advisors all need to understand which performance commitments and outcome delivery incentives sit where, how customer compensation interacts with the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, and how the CMA Provisional Findings on the five referrals reshape risk allocation for the remaining undertakers.

GridteamAI's Gap 35 report, the Tranche 2 Water flagship, decodes PR24 Final Determinations end-to-end. The £104 bn breakdown by category, the five-CMA-referral landscape, the Thames Water restructuring narrative, the performance commitment framework, the customer bill profile and the cross-volume interactions with WRMP24 (Gap 36), SROs (Gap 37), Storm Overflows (Gap 38) and Bioresources (Gap 41).