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< Repair work starts on Glendoe hydro-electric scheme | Ofgem plans demise of 65-day rule >
Scots debate what the structure of the water industry should be
Works in progress: should Scottish Water use public or private money?
Scottish organisations have been voicing their opinions about the future of Scottish Water ahead of the next comprehensive spending review, expected this autumn. The Scottish Government is currently conducting an independent review of public expenditure.
The Centre for Public Policy for Regions said in a briefing report: "Scottish Water relies on the Scottish Government to part-fund its investment. As demand for scarce public funds grows, justification for the Scottish Government continuing to use any of its increasingly scarce budget to fund Scottish Water's activities becomes harder to justify."
It spelt out the different ways in which the publically-owned Scottish Water could be restructured to access external funding. These included mutualisation and privatisation.
A discussion paper from a group of unions operating in Scotland's water sector, including Unison, said: "The usual vested interests are circling around the guaranteed profits that a regulated privatised industry could bring... Of more concern is the role of [regulator] Wics, which has advocated moving away from the public model."
They had further harsh words for Wics, saying: "The absence of stakeholders and the predominance of experts, namely economic experts with a neo-liberal ideological training, may well make the regulator unresponsive to the needs of customers."
They said that in this regard Wics was "acting as a buffer for the [Scottish] executive on politically controversial matters".
A spokesman for Wics said the regulator had no comment to make in the run-up to a general election.
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