Scottish Water jv to launch at last

The jv sees Scottish Water join forces with two private sector partners in an attempt to tackle a massive backlog of repair work and upgrading across Scotland. The private sector partners are Stirling Water (Gleeson, Alfred McAlpine and Thames Water) and United Utilities with Galliford and Morgan Est.

The deal was warmly welcomed by Scotland's civil engineers this week. Earlier this year civil engineers had complained that the protracted negotiations to seal the deal, which should have been signed in April, were causing a serious shortfall of work in Scotland.

Now they are looking forward to a massive boost to their order books.

Civil Engineering Contractors Association Scotland chief executive Alan Watt said: "Scottish contractors will welcome the formal launch of Scottish Water Solutions as part of Scottish Water's commitment to get work out on the ground quickly and efficiently. It is no secret that the water infrastructure should provide nearly half of Scotland's civil engineering workload over the next few years and the introduction of Solutions will help the industry recover from a downturn across the whole Scottish civils market. We undoubtedly need this boost and are extremely keen to get out there and tackle it."

But the launch came too late for some civils workers. Scottish Nationalist Party chief whip Bruce Crawford said there had already been redundancies in the civils sector as a result of the hiatus in work, with reports of civils firms being forced to let staff go and seek building work to make ends meet.

He commented: "The current financial arrangements that Scottish Water operates under are not sustainable and contractors have a right to feel aggrieved. The current set-up has all the disadvantages of privatisation with none of the advantages.

"What is needed is a form of not-for-profit trust, similar to that in Wales. Otherwise Scottish Water will always be operating under financial constraints. This is no sop to those civil engineering workers that have been struggling to find work over the past year," said Crawford.