Water utilities as local development partners and anchor institutions: Five big takeaways from LEDC’s episode with Scottish Water Alex Plant

Having ‘dipped our toes’ into Water and Place with this Espresso Shot episode in June, we were thrilled to welcome Alex Plant, the Chief Executive Officer of Scottish Water for a much ‘deeper dive’ into the critical importance of water infrastructure and their utility providers in LED and placemaking.

Alex Plant brings a fascinatingly diverse background to this challenge. Prior to joining Scottish Water in June 2023, he spent nearly a decade at Anglian Water as Director of Strategy and Regulation. Before entering the water sector, his career journey included significant, high-impact roles across various sectors, including local government, national and regional civil service. Alex’s breadth of experience—spanning public service, regulation, and large-scale logistics—lends a unique strategic perspective to his current mission: transforming Scottish Water into an active, community-focused anchor institution that drives positive change across all of Scotland.

Our discussion far transcends the engineering challenges of pipes and purification. We focus more on water utilities' expansive and foundational roles in regional economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental resilience, and, of course, whether Scottish Water’s public ownership matters! Alex discusses major changes and enduring challenges in the rest of the decade with which all of us need to proactively engage – from new regional planning to large scale investments, and how local and regional leadership teams can get the most from the water companies in their region.

These are five of the key takeaways the episode surfaces. It is a must listen for those of us trying to turn water and sewage from a constraint to an opportunity for sustainable development.

Local and regional economic leadership teams need to understand and engage in the new system of long-term regional water and sewage planning

The availability and capacity of water and sewage infrastructure is often seen as a bottleneck for housing delivery and commercial expansion. The Cunliffe Report (officially the Independent Water Commission's final report) recommends a fundamental overhaul of long-term regional planning for water and sewage in England and Wales. The new system will establish structures for integrated, catchment-based planning with 25-year horizons. The UK Government responded positively to report’s recommendations, which will be progressed in a new Water Reform Bill.

Economic leadership teams must now treat water infrastructure as a strategic enabler—not just a utility. They should prepare to work closely with the proposed Regional Systems Planners and the new integrated regulator. Embedding housing, jobs, and sustainability goals into water sector planning will be essential to unlocking growth. As Alex Plant puts it, water utilities are evolving into development partners and anchor institutions—central to shaping inclusive, water-secure futures. For LED professionals, this is a call to action: build the relationships, capabilities, and strategic foresight needed to ensure water investment supports, rather than constrains, local prosperity.

Water companies’ investments over the next five years – potentially amounting to £110bn – are a major opportunity for local economic development and infrastructure renewal

This unprecedented capital programme spanning the next regulatory period (2025-2030), represents one of the largest infrastructure spending commitments in the UK. Handled collaboratively, it can be a powerful, local economic stimulus and placemaking package.

Local and regional leadership teams should seek to co-design the planning and delivery of this investment programme. This means being clear on the preferences and strategic choices facing the water industry and integrating them with place-based priorities and opportunities. Water and sewage infrastructure renewal can do more than enable housing and industrial growth. It can be a catalyst for civic and environmental enhancements, providing opportunities for co-investment in green infrastructure, public realm, and climate resilience.

The major construction activity will be a considerable economic driver in its own right. Focusing on supply chains and skills opportunities can ensure local residents and businesses are equipped to secure a share of the billions being spent. It will also present sequencing and capacity challenges. Large-scale pipe-laying projects may be coordinated with streetscape improvements, broadband rollout, and the creation of Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) that double as public green spaces (e.g., rain gardens, wetlands, pocket parks). Economic leaders should be proactive in aligning local skills provision with infrastructure workforce needs and ensuring that procurement and contracting strategies support local SMEs and inclusive employment.

Building strategic alliances with a responsible, place-responsive water industry can be more effective than post-privatisation regulatory and client-contractor divisions

In England, post-privatisation, the relationship between public policymakers and water companies has been characterised by friction. The public sector has acted as a demanding regulator or a frustrated client, while water companies act as defensively compliant contractors seeking to balance investment spend with tariff rises.

This relationship is fundamentally ill-suited to solving complex, long-term challenges like climate resilience, housing growth, and water poverty. LED and placemaking professionals should work with their local water company to agree shared regional outcomes, moving beyond econometric regulatory compliance toward co-investing in multi-benefit solutions.

Alex described the approach of Scottish Water as sharing responsibility for Scotland’s long-term health and competitiveness. He also narrated how Anglian Water had changed the purposes in its Articles of Association to emphasise the wellbeing and prosperity of the communities they serve. Establishing a shared vision where the utility's success is directly tied to the region's economic and environmental success will accelerate sustainable development, ensure resilient infrastructure delivery, and create truly integrated, thriving places.

Water as a catalyst for triple bottom line dividends and innovation is widely distributed across much of the UK rather than heavily concentrated in three or four clusters like many other key sectors

Unlike sectors such as finance, life sciences, or advanced manufacturing—often concentrated in a few high-density clusters—water investment touches almost every region. That means smaller cities, towns, and rural areas can leverage water-related capital programmes to stimulate local employment, green infrastructure, and climate adaptation. Alex referenced several examples in different settings – from Glasgow’s smart canals to wetlands in Norfolk; from Glasgow’s global hosting of next year’s set-piece International Water Association Congress to the success of voluntary collaborative arrangements like Water Resource East.

Local teams can focus on leveraging their incumbent water utility and existing regional assets—such as universities with hydro-engineering expertise, local SMEs specialising in sensors or nature-based solutions (NBS), and the proximity to unique water environments (coasts, rivers, wetlands)—to solve specific local water challenges. This allows regions to become micro-clusters of hydro-innovation focused on issues like coastal flood resilience or sustainable farming, securing local, highly skilled jobs while directly improving the quality of their place.

Consider 2025/26 as a major reset moment in ‘futures thinking’ about the opportunities and challenges of water and sewage in our local and regional economic strategies

The convergence of the Cunliffe Report's regulatory overhaul and the start of the next massive five-year investment cycle (AMP8/PR24, starting April 2025) creates a unique juncture that demands a fundamental re-evaluation of water's role in local economic planning.

Alex argued for us to see 2025 as strategic inflection point where the assumptions of the past—that water is cheap, endlessly available, and its disposal is easily managed—are proven false by climate change, population density, and chronic pollution issues. He invites economic leaders to engage with water utilities to build capacity for systems thinking, scenario planning, and cross-sector collaboration. LED teams should be asking: What does a water-secure future look like for our region? How do we align our growth ambitions with catchment-based planning and climate adaptation? And how can we use this moment to unlock innovation, investment, and community benefit?

There is much to learn from the Scottish example (and Wales’s mutual ownership). Alex  recognises that all water companies – but especially those in England – need to welcome and embrace these agendas as well.

Concluding remarks

The conversation with Alex points to several powerful conclusions which in some senses we already know, but which are too often obscured by our fraught relations with regional water utilities and their performance. Water and sewage is not merely a service to be regulated, and a constraint to be overcome, but a fundamental, distributed foundation upon which all future sustainable economic and social life must be built.

To this end, the major water utilities must be part of top-table anchor institution collaborations in our cities and regions.  By proactively engaging in the new planning cycles (Cunliffe), co-designing the use of the immense capital investment, forging genuine strategic alliances, and leveraging the distributed nature of hydro-innovation, we can secure a triple bottom line dividend for our places. The 2025/26 regulatory reset is the moment to shift the paradigm, ensuring local and regional economic strategies are truly water-secure, climate-resilient, and built to thrive for decades to come.

Please let us know how you engage with your water utilities and whether these discussions are increasing in prominence playing in your places, communities and institutions, post-Cunliffe. Would you like LEDC to do more episodes on these types of topics? Please let us know your guest and thematic ideas for future episodes and shots.

Further reading

On the Cunliffe report, Government’s initial response and what it means for LED and placemaking:

• The Independent Water Commission’s final report (Cunliffe), interim report and evidence calls

• The UK Government’s initial response to the final report – by Environment Secretary Steve Reed, then at DEFRA, now at MCHLG

• This report by the Water Industry Group and this blog from the CEO of  The Rivers Trust give independent perspectives on the Cunliffe proposals and the impact they may have nationally and locally

On the issues discussed here and, in the podcast, more generally:

• Find out more about Scottish Water from its annual report and accounts, the annual report of the Scottish regulator on SW performance, and this review of ownership and regulatory models from CCW (the Welsh consumer’s voice body)

• Water Resource East Regional Plan 2025 -50 is referenced in the podcast and provides a strong example of what the voluntary system can produce. Alex argues for this to be give more statutory teeth post-Cunliffe, and Government seems to agree.

• Alex mentions Glasgow’s hosting the IWA Congress next year. The IWAs Principles for Water- Wise Cities is a good starting point for water considerations of placemaking.