(Reuters) – British water industry regulator Ofwat said on Monday it is developing a 100 million pound ($128.31 million) fund to regulate a reduction in water demand across England and Wales.
The regulator plans to set the fund in the summer of 2024 and expects it to be operational by April 2025 based on the responses gathered by early 2024, it said in a statement.
This comes after Britain’s biggest water supplier, Thames Water, was rescued from a financial crisis earlier this month after investors had agreed to inject 750 million pounds.
The company was fighting to secure more equity as it struggles under the weight of its 14 billion pounds debt pile, casting a shadow over the whole sector in Britain which needs to upgrade its ageing infrastructure and stop sewage spills.
Ofwat is also monitoring the finances of Southern Water, majority owned by Australia’s Macquarie, and Yorkshire Water, whose biggest shareholder is the private equity arm of Singapore’s GIC investment group.
($1 = 0.7794 pounds)
(Reporting by Urvi Dugar in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
