A new global survey shows that Britain’s water supply and sewerage infrastructure is rated higher by people living in the UK than all other sectors apart from airports, according to Water UK. 

The industry association was commenting on the findings of the latest Global Infrastructure Index survey conducted by Ipsos MORI in partnership with the Global Infrastructure Investor Associ ation (GIIA), published yesterday.

The GIIA is the membership body for the world’s leading institutional investors.

Water UK said the survey showed that Britain’s water and sewerage infrastructure was also judged to be better than the global (52%) and G8 (57%) average ratings for the sector.

65% of participants in the survey judged Britain’s water and sewerage infrastructure to be very good or fairly good, far higher than other areas such as the local road network (42%), energy generation (39%) or rail (33%).

They survey reflects the views of nearly 20,000 people in 29 countries across the world, including 1006 adults in the UK. The survey collected ratings of 10 infrastructure sectors, with airports, and water supply and sewerage in Britain performing particularly strongly.

However, while 73% said that infrastructure was vital to their country’s future economic growth, 59% of people surveyed said their country wasn’t doing enough to meet future infrastructure requirements.

Flood defences (58%), local roads (53%) and rail infrastructure (track and stations) (49%) had the highest levels of dissatisfaction.

Globally, more people are comfortable with foreign investment in new infrastructure if it means it gets built more quickly than not, by a margin of two and a half to one (49% to 19%).

Commenting on the findings, Water UK Chief Executive Michael Roberts said:

“It’s no coincidence that our water and sewerage infrastructure is rated so highly, given that water companies have invested £150 billion on improvements to the industry since privatisation. The plans that companies have put forward for 2020 to 2025 propose an extra £50 billion of investment, which will see infrastructure improved even further as we address the big challenges of the future, such as the pressures caused by climate change and population growth.”

Click here to download the Global Infrastructure Index 2018: Great Britain Findings