(Reuters) -United Utilities on Thursday signed an agreement for a 3 billion pound ($4.03 billion) refurbishment of a key pipeline supplying water from Cumbria to 2.5 million customers in northwest England.
Cascade Infrastructure will deliver the project to upgrade Haweswater aqueduct in what could become one of the largest water infrastructure programmes across the UK.
The UK water sector has been under the spotlight for failures to tackle pollution problems and for prioritising profits and dividends over the environment and infrastructure investments.
“We are rebuilding the water network from the ground up through one of the largest infrastructure projects ever seen in Britain,” Water Minister Emma Hardy said in a statement.
The 110 kilometre long Haweswater aqueduct is nearly 70 years old and uses gravity to deliver 570 million litres of water daily to Cumbria, Lancashire, and Greater Manchester.
Construction by Cascade Infrastructure, which has delivered similar tunnelling schemes in Europe, is expected to start in 2026 and will see six tunnel sections replaced, United Utilities said.
This is the first programme in the water sector to be delivered through a so-called direct procurement for customers model, a process where companies outsource the delivery of major infrastructure projects to third-party provider.
($1 = 0.7444 pounds)
(Reporting by Ankita Bora and Yadarisa Shabong in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonia Cheema and Mrigank Dhaniwala)
