3.125 To ensure the infrastructure meets the challenge of maintaining performance in the face of future challenges, the Government:
• will support Ofwat and the water industry in implementing a £22 billion programme of investment over 2010-15. This investment will be directed at balancing supply and demand and maintaining assets, improving environmental protections and delivering service improvements. The costs associated with the transfer of private sewers are not included within this programme of investment and are subject to further agreement and potential increases to customer bills. The next 5-year cycle of investment will be subject to Ofwat's price review, to be implemented from 2015-16;
• announced in the Natural Environment White Paper published in June 2011 that it intended to reform the water abstraction regime to facilitate investment to meet water needs and protect water ecosystems to respond to these challenges. Following the Cave Review, the Government has also been considering ways of encouraging innovation and improving customer choice. It is also looking at the scope for better inter-connectivity to encourage water trading. Reform proposals in all these areas will be set out in the Water White Paper, to be published in December 2011;
• is working with the Environment Agency and others on adopting a catchment based approach which, if rolled out across the country, will help deliver further improvements in delivering WFD objectives in the remainder of the first cycle of river basin planning and in preparing for the second. Through engaging a broader range of polluters and beneficiaries at a more local level we hope to achieve further improvements in the ecology of our water bodies and reduce the amount of treatment required through tackling diffuse pollution issues.
• the increasing level of sewage overflowing into the River Thames is an example of where the capacity of the drainage system to cope with an increasing population and increasing urbanisation has been exceeded and there is now a need to build new infrastructure to meet both current and future needs. The proposed Thames Tunnel will, in combination with other measures, also provide resilience to likely increased intensity of rainfall as a result of climate change and help prevent the ecological status of the Thames Tideway from deteriorating after decades of improvement;
• the Water White Paper will also set out in more detail what the Government will do to ensure households continue to receive a secure and safe water supply at prices they can afford;
• will ensure that the White Paper continues to provide a stable policy and regulatory framework within which investors in the sector can confidently take long term decisions; and
• households in the South West face by far the highest water bills in the country. The Government has decided to fund South West Water to enable it to cut bills by £50 per year for all household customers.