Water Supply & Waste Water Treatment Sector Plan

Overview

Water is essential to life itself as well as every aspect of our society and economy. The global pressures on our fresh water resources are enormous and will continue to grow. How a society manages the provision of its water supply and its waste water services will be a key determinant of how successful it is. Ultimately, even a water-abundant nation such as Scotland will have to unlock innovation on a grand scale.

So, in the future management of water, what will success look like? In short, we’ll use less of it and we’ll waste none of it. We are a long way from achieving this, but many people and organisations have made a start and Scotland has a global reputation for its expertise in water management. SEPA is determined that, as Scotland’s environment protection regulator, we will support this focus on both excellence and innovation in water and wastewater management. How we propose to play our role is spelt out in this draft sector plan.

Alongside the plan we have shared an annex about our approach to stengthening and streamlining how we regulate private sewage systems for new houses and extensions to existing houses. Questions relating to the annex are included in our online survey.

A print version of the sector plan for consultation is also available.

Why your views matter

The draft sector plans are our initial ideas on where we can make the most significant impact. Getting feedback early in the process from our communities, partners and stakeholders is important and your feedback is critical to the success of our sector planning approach. If you think that we have got something wrong, missed a critical opportunity or not been as transparent as possible, please let us know your thoughts.

We aim to get these plans finalised in the first months of 2019 and then push on to implement them. Your views will also help to shape the prioritisation for the implementation, which will be completed following the consultation period.