Modifications to NI Water’s licence

Under Article 20 of the Water and Sewerage Services (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 as amended (“the Order”), the Utility Regulator has approved a series of modifications to the instrument of appointment granted to Northern Ireland Water Limited by the Department for Regional Development on 23rd March 2007 (the “Licence”) under its powers extant at Article 20 (1) of the Order.

Following our consultation on proposed modifications to NI Water’s licence, the amendments will become effective from 12 November 2013.  NI Water accepted the proposed licence modifications on 26 September.

The approved licence modifications will:

i) Align the licence to reflect the three year price control period for PC10, the two year price control period for PC13, the six year price control period for PC15 and allow for the structure of future price control periods;
(ii) Specify the period relating to which a review of infrastructure charges relates;
(iii) Amend NI Water’s licence to restrict the recovery of unused K beyond a three year period or to the end of a price control; whichever is the shorter period; and
(iv) Require future estate management plans to cover a ten year period.

The consultation period ended on 19 August 2013 and we received a total of three responses to the consultation which can be viewed here.

The licence modification notice which documents the licence amendments may be found here:

In addition, we have written to advise NI Water of the Water and Sewerage Services (Amendment) Act 2013.  Details of the amendment to Article 213 (3) of the Water and Sewerage Services (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 may be found here.

This legislation extends the ‘initial period’ during which the Department for Regional Development is obliged to make grants to NI Water equal to the amount of discounts provided to consumers to the 31 March 2016.  The modification extends the ‘public expenditure budget and regulatory price control period’ in Condition B section 5A of NI Water’s Instrument of Appointment (licence) to the 31 March 2016.

Our letter confirming the amendments to NI Water is available here