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Email us →UK and Ireland water, wastewater and construction skills intelligence.
Nine volumes on this sector, every figure traced to a named primary source and carried at a stated verification date. We read Ofwat, Defra, RAPID, DESNZ and the ECITB census so that you do not have to. Scroll down to see what is in them.
It is people.
The ECITB workforce census records 81 per cent of renewables employers already experiencing hiring difficulty, against a need for 40,000 additional engineering-construction workers by 2030.
PR24’s £104bn envelope, the £88bn storm overflows programme and the £20–30bn strategic resource options — read from Ofwat, Defra and RAPID, and dated.
Every performance commitment, every RAPID gate, every business plan, traced back to the publication it came from.
Check which of the eleven undertakers holds the budget for the work you are bidding for, and when it lands.
Track the five RAPID gates on SESRO, Anglian, Severn-Thames and Teddington against their published cost progression.
See where the £88bn storm overflows programme is opening Tier 1 supply-chain capacity you can bid into.
Plan your hiring against the occupations the Clean Energy Jobs Plan says will be short by 2030.
A knowledgeable and dependable team who are always willing to help. Their understanding of the UK energy and infrastructure market has been particularly valuable to us.
Water infrastructure is the pipes, treatment works, reservoirs and sewers that bring clean water to your tap and take the dirty water away. In England and Wales it is run by regional companies, and the regulator, Ofwat, sets what they can charge and spend, five years at a time. Scottish Water and NI Water are publicly owned.
Treat the money for 2025 to 2030 as largely set. Ofwat's final decision of 19 December 2024 allowed £104 billion of spending, including £12 billion for 2,884 projects to cut sewage spills from storm overflows, the outlets that release sewage into rivers and the sea when sewers are full. Under that decision, average bills in England and Wales rise by £157, or 36 per cent, over the five years before inflation is added.
Check which company you are bidding to, because five of them asked the Competition and Markets Authority to look again. Its final ruling of 10 March 2026 set new price limits for Anglian, Northumbrian, South East, Southern and Wessex, with average bills 2 to 4 per cent higher than Ofwat had set at four of them and unchanged at Northumbrian.
Expect the regulator itself to change. The government said on 21 July 2025 that it will abolish Ofwat and replace it with a single water regulator, and the King's Speech of 13 May 2026 named the Clean Water Bill that will make the change. Until the new regulator is set up in law, Ofwat stays in charge.
Plan your hiring early if you also bid for energy work, because the government expects clean energy jobs to almost double by 2030. Its Clean Energy Jobs Plan of October 2025 puts them at around 440,000 in 2023 and around 860,000 by 2030.
| Figure | What it is | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| £104 billion | Spending Ofwat allowed water companies in England and Wales, 2025 to 2030 | Ofwat final determinations, 19 December 2024 |
| £12 billion | Of that, the spend on 2,884 projects to reduce sewage spills from storm overflows | Ofwat, 19 December 2024 |
| £3.4 billion | Extra spending Ofwat's August draft allowed on the companies' 2026 requests, against £4.3 billion asked for | Ofwat, August 2026 |
Look out for December 2026, when Ofwat makes its final decisions on the extra money the companies asked for in 2026, on top of the £104 billion. Its August draft allowed £3.4 billion of the £4.3 billion asked for. Most of that would be added to the value Ofwat puts on each company's network and paid for through bills from April 2030, with only a small part changing bills from April 2027.
Read the latest water news in The Wire below, with a link to each source. Open any project on our map to see when we last checked it. The lists below include Irish projects, which our Ireland volumes cover separately.
Not sure which of our reports you need? Email book@gridteamai.com and we'll point you to the right one. Figures checked 9 November 2026.
Underneath all of this — the binding workforce constraint. The £625 million Construction Skills Package targets 60,000 additional workers; the ECITB workforce census records 81% of renewables employers facing hiring challenges. UK & Ireland infrastructure delivery is now workforce-constrained, not capital-constrained.
Watch this sector live on the boards — the Heatmap for its projects, the Data Board for its targets against delivery.
Open any volume and you get consultancy-grade depth: twelve findings, headline figures, the Director's Six-Check, a glossary of named entities, and named UK undertakers + suppliers + civils consortia. deep report PDF + two-page Crib Sheet + quarterly Currency Addendum.
£295 single volume · from £99 a month, or £995 a year: one named reader — the full multi-volume catalogue, every new volume released during the year, and the 120 Safety Moments. Team £2,495/yr (up to 10 named readers) · Enterprise £4,995/yr (whole company, up to 250 employees) · Corporate £9,995/yr (above 250 employees).
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