LONDON, April 25, 2026, 23:06 BST
United Utilities Group PLC is pushing ahead with more than £34 million of sewer and storm-tank works around Bury, Prestwich and Whitefield, a local project that now carries a wider test for Britain’s water sector: whether higher bills will buy cleaner rivers. The company said the schemes are designed to cut how often storm overflows — outlets that release excess wastewater and rainwater when sewers are overloaded — operate into the River Irwell and nearby tributaries.
The timing matters. The new 2025-30 investment period is under way, and water companies are under pressure from regulators, politicians and customers to show faster environmental gains after years of sewage-spill scrutiny. United Utilities says its broader plan is to spend more than £13 billion over five years to protect or improve more than 500 kilometres of rivers, lakes and bathing waters, while safeguarding drinking-water supplies.
Customers are already paying more. MoneySavingExpert, citing industry data, forecast United Utilities’ average 2026/27 water and sewerage bill at £660, up £57, or 9%, from 2025/26. Severn Trent’s average bill was forecast up 10%, while Southern Water’s was seen rising 8%, putting United Utilities in the same pack of operators being judged on whether bill increases turn into visible service improvements.
The largest of the three Irwell-area schemes is at Bury wastewater treatment works, where United Utilities said it is spending £28 million on two new storm tanks, each able to hold 3,000 cubic metres of excess flows. The work is expected to finish in June 2026. The company also cited a £2.5 million tank project in Prestwich and £3.7 million of tank and sewer upgrades in Whitefield, adding more than 6,100 cubic metres of storm-water storage in total.
Chris Borradaile, United Utilities’ wastewater services director, called the projects “another important step” and said the extra storage should “significantly reduce” storm-overflow use. He framed the work as part of the company’s “largest programme” of wastewater investment in a century in northwest England. United Utilities
Meters are another strand of the same delivery story. Water Magazine reported on Friday that United Utilities had installed more than 200,000 smart meters in the past 12 months and plans to install or upgrade more than one million over the next four years. Smart meters are digital meters that send water-use data more often, helping companies spot leaks and helping households track consumption. Scott Green, the company’s head of metering and field services, said the rollout was “ahead of schedule”; Mike Smith at Arqiva said the milestone showed “speed and ambition.” Water Magazine
Investors will get the next formal numbers on May 14, when United Utilities is due to report full-year results. In a March pre-close update, the group said it expected underlying earnings per share — profit per share excluding certain items — for 2025/26 to be around 100 pence before an accounting change. The change is expected to cut underlying net finance expense by about £35 million and add about 5 pence to underlying EPS, while operating-cost guidance was unchanged.
The shares were quoted at 1,339 pence to sell and 1,340 pence to buy on Friday, down 0.33%, with AJ Bell showing a market value of about £9.14 billion. The stock’s total return for April 24 was also down 0.33%, compared with a 0.75% fall for the FTSE 100, the data showed.
United Utilities is a large regional monopoly, and that scale cuts both ways. Reuters data describes the group as supplying about 1.8 billion litres of water a day to more than 8 million people and businesses, with more than 79,000 kilometres of wastewater pipes and sewers and 583 wastewater treatment works. That gives it the asset base to absorb big investment, but also many points of failure.
But the delivery risk is plain. The Environment Agency’s 2024 Environmental Performance Assessment, a regulator scorecard for water companies, rated United Utilities at two stars, meaning the company “requires improvement”. The agency recorded 347 sewerage pollution incidents for the company in 2024 and rated that metric red; United Utilities would have needed 158 or fewer incidents to be green. More wet weather, project delays, contractor bottlenecks or fresh pollution failures could blunt the impact of new tanks and keep bills under sharper scrutiny. Gov
For now, the Bury, Prestwich and Whitefield works give management something concrete to point to: tanks, pipes and storage capacity, not just a five-year spending pledge. The harder evidence will come later, in lower overflow use, fewer pollution incidents, better leakage data and whether customers see enough improvement to justify the higher bills.
