Ofwat has updated its website, and seemingly broken all links to its pages and publications.

Our links to Ofwat's site (and any other links using go.reckon.co.uk) will be progressively restored over the next week or so. Direct links to pages and documents on www.ofwat.gov.uk, including those embedded in the PDF code of recent published Ofwat documents such as the March 2008 PR09 approach paper (70 pages, PDF), are presumably broken forever.

Excellent guidance on website updates is available from the UK Government's Cabinet Office and from the W3C consortium. In line with many other UK Government departments, Ofwat does not seem to have taken any notice of this advice.

OFT consultation (28 pages, PDF) on its plans for the financial year 2009/2010. Responses by Friday 6 February 2009.

Northern Ireland Utility Regulator consultation (110 pages, PDF) on its work plans. Responses by Friday 9 January 2009 (noon).

Ofwat consultation (14 landscape pages, PDF) on its work plans for the next three financial years. Responses by Thursday 22 January 2009.

Ofwat letter (about 3 pages with three Microsoft Excel attachments) seeking:

• Detailed information on capacity and historical output of individual water treatment works and water sources.
• A detailed time of day and year profile of water treatment output for each water resource zone.
• Detailed water and sewerage network diagrams showing individual sources, pumping and treatment works, network flows and capacities, and (for water only) information on interconnection with other companies, and a commentary on network constraints within and between company areas.
• “Please list the economies of scale and/or scope in your company. Please also quantify each of these economies of scale and/or scope.”
• “Please give details on how you optimise your water (and sewerage, if applicable) network.”

The reason given for this emergency data collection is that Ofwat wishes to analyse “the potential for competition in water resources and treatment, and sewage treatment” as part of its contribution to other Government processes. But there is no sewage treatment counterpart to the detailed capacity and output data sought for water abstraction and treatment.

Companies are asked for these data by Monday 3 November 2008. This is the ninth working day after the stated date of Ofwat's request, and the eighth working day after the publication of the request on Ofwat's website.

National Audit Office report (49 pages, PDF) on the UK Government's programme to reduce the administrative burdens of business regulation by 25 per cent.

The report highlights doubts about the measurement of reductions in administrative burden, and states that “it has not been possible to find evidence of the impact on the productivity of the economy”, and “the wider impact of the Programme [on economic growth] is unproven”.

The Government has claimed in 2008 (105 pages, 4.5M PDF) that its “initiative to set a target for reducing administrative burdens by 25 per cent by 2010 could increase GDP by 0.9 per cent”, citing a 2006 study (122 pages, PDF) for the European Commission. The main part of the estimates in that study (which actually gives a 1.1 per cent figure for the UK) is an assumption that the whole amount of labour no longer used for regulatory compliance would be redeployed into an increase in production (the remainder would arise from productivity improvements and other spillover effects). Percentages of GDP were derived from an estimate for the total UK administrative burden of 2.4 per cent of GDP which was sourced from a 2005 extrapolation (19 pages, PDF) of Dutch data.

Annual report (27 landscape pages, PDF) of the Northern Ireland Authority for Utility Regulation for the financial year 2007/2008.

The short financial report at the end shows that expenditure was £6.4 million, up by 57 per cent on the previous year. About 60 per cent of the increase is attributed to the water and sewerage regulation functions gained by the Authority between the two years; the rest is accounted for by spending increases for electricity and gas of 20 and 43 per cent respectively.

The 21st page of the document reports on plans for “website enhancements”.