Ref No.: 05 26
Request Type: EIR
Date Received: 12/05/26
Date Responded: 29/05/26
Category: Economic Regulation
Request
- All documents, reports, models, and decisions relating to economic regulation of Scottish Water, including price setting, investment priorities, and how rural vs. Central Belt needs are balanced.
- Data on capital and operational expenditure allocated to rural versus urban networks (last 15 years if available), including connections, upgrades, and resilience projects.
- Any assessments of affordability, charging structures, and economic impacts on rural customers (who often face private systems or higher connection costs).
- Correspondence or analyses regarding rural economic disadvantage arising from water/sewerage infrastructure gaps compared to the Central Belt.
Response
Many thanks for your request for information dated 12 May 2026 and for the follow up information you provided to us on 21 May 2026. Your request asks for:
- All documents, reports, models, and decisions relating to economic regulation of Scottish Water, including price setting, investment priorities, and how rural vs. Central Belt needs are balanced.
- Data on capital and operational expenditure allocated to rural versus urban networks (last 15 years if available), including connections, upgrades, and resilience projects.
- Any assessments of affordability, charging structures, and economic impacts on rural customers (who often face private systems or higher connection costs).
- Correspondence or analyses regarding rural economic disadvantage arising from water/sewerage infrastructure gaps compared to the Central Belt.
We have handled your request as a request for environmental information under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EISRs). We have provided more information on the EISRs, how they apply and why we have applied the exception in the Annex to this response.
Given the wide-reaching scope of your request we consider points 1, 3 and 4 to be manifestly unreasonable in accordance with section 10(4)(b) of the EISRs. Our initial searches have indicated that there is more than 35GB of data relating to the broad topic you are pursuing and therefore complying with these parts of your request would pose a significant burden on WICS. It would be necessary for us to review any potentially relevant item in detail before being able to process and release to you. This makes points 1, 3 and 4 of your request, as currently drafted, unreasonable and disproportionate.
The use of this exception requires consideration of the public interest. While it is acknowledged there is a public interest in the economic regulation and pricing structures, it is essential that this is balanced against the public interest in delivering our role and the extent to which a request of this nature would impact on our ability to deliver our statutory tasks. This is particularly relevant in this case as a good knowledge of the subject matter would be required to review the documentation and determine what was relevant to your request.
In relation to point 2 of your request, we provide you with the following information:
All raw data on operating expenditure, connections, upgrades and resilience projects is available on our website in the annual return submissions. Using the annual return submission for 2024-25 as an example, the closest data available for these items is set out in the table below.
Table and link |
Description |
| Table M18W and Table M18WW | Water and wastewater operating expenditure for Scottish Water |
| Table E4 | Direct operating expenditure for resources and treatment based on four operating areas (North, East, South and West) in line E4.17 |
| Table E6 | Water connected properties by area (North, East, South and West) in line E6.2 |
| Table E7 | Direct operating expenditure for sewerage and sewage treatment (North, East, South and West) in lines E7.17 and line E7.45 respectively |
| Table E7 | Sewerage connected properties by area (North, East, South and West) in line E6.2 |
| Table G6a | Capital investment projects that can be filtered by local authority area in column 8 |
Our website provides annual return data from 2002-03 up to the present and you might find this helpful.
In addition to the annual return data, you might find our regulatory price setting publications useful.
If you are unhappy with this response to your request, you may ask us to carry out a review by contacting us. Your request for review should explain why you are dissatisfied and should be made within 40 working days of receipt of this response. The review will be undertaken by staff not involved in the original process and we will reply within 20 working days of receipt.
If you are not satisfied with the outcome of the review, you then have the right to appeal to the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) and thereafter to the Court of Session on a point of law only. The SIC can be contacted using the details below:
Scottish Information Commissioner
Kinburn Castle, Doubledykes Road
St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9DS
Telephone: 01334 464610
Web: www.foi.scot