Derry development being held back because waste and sewerage works near capacity limit: NIAO

Auditor General, Dorinnia Carville, in her ‘Funding water infrastructure in NI’ report published on Thursday, warned a lack of capacity across the North, has meant development applications in 100 areas, including 25 cities and towns including Derry, cannot be approved or are being subject to restrictions.

“Despite the trend of long-term improvement in NI Water’s performance, there are widespread concerns amongst key stakeholders relating to water infrastructure,” the report states.

NI Water’s spending is determined by the Utility Regulator and the latest Price Control 21 (PC21) business plan for 2021-2027 agreed investment of £2.1 billion.

PC21 also identified 100 wastewater treatment facilities serving populations of less than 250,000 that were at or near full capacity in January 2020.

Several wastewater treatment works in the North West were included: Aghanloo, Ballymagorry, Culmore, Donemana, Dungiven, Limavady and Strabane.

"Through NI Water’s current investment programme, upgrades have been initiated at 16 wastewater treatment works since April 2021. There are approximately 100 areas across NI, including 25 cities and main towns, where NI Water considers it cannot provide positive responses to new development planning applications.

"The inability to approve new developments and the need to conduct wastewater impact assessments poses a significant risk to the NI Executive being able to deliver some of its long-term economic, social, and environmental objectives,” the audit report adds.

Planned investment of £2.1bn from 2021-27 represents an 87 per cent increase from 2015-21. The report says the Department of Infrastructure (DfI) was able to fully deliver the required funding during the first two years of the plan, in spite of drastic increases in costs.

Total capital and resource funding for 2023-24, however, was approximately £93m lower than what NI Water identified as being necessary. It is expected there will be another shortfall in 2024-25 and that this is likely to significantly affect the delivery of assets planned for development in PC21.

Ms. Carville said: “This report highlights the challenges that decision-makers have faced in securing the finance and investment needed to meet water infrastructure requirements in the coming decades.

"A very real consequence of this underinvestment is that there are many areas in NI where new development, including the construction of homes and other buildings, is restricted due to insufficient capacity to connect to sewage and wastewater services.”

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Her report points out the main cause of these restrictions on development is ‘NI Water determining that there is insufficient capacity within existing sewerage and wastewater infrastructure in these areas to support the additional demand that would be introduced by proposed new development’.

Underinvestment, the document notes, is a long term problem that is not unique to the North.

"Since 2007 there has remained a gap between the level of investment that has been available, and the level needed to meet current and emerging demand for water and sewerage services arising from new development.

"This issue is not unique to NI, with evidence emerging that many other water companies across the UK have underinvested in water and sewerage infrastructure resulting in sustained high levels of leakage, frequent water shortages during periods of drought and issues with unauthorised sewerage discharges to waterways and coastal waters,” it states.

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