Securing your water for generations to come

The Haweswater Aqueduct is a major feat of engineering. The 110km pipeline, built between 1933 and 1955, uses gravity to carry 570 million litres of water every day to 2.5 million people in Cumbria, Lancashire and Greater Manchester – or nearly 5 per cent of England’s population.   

As a result of detailed investigations to assess the condition of the aqueduct, we will be replacing all six tunnel sections along its length. These investigations began in February 2019 and the data gathered helped us develop our proposals for the work.

We put our plans out for consultation in Spring 2020 and nine planning applications were submitted to seven different local planning authorities spanning across Cumbria, Lancashire and Greater Manchester. The planning permissions for The Haweswater Aqueduct Resilience Programme (HARP) are now confirmed.

With an estimated construction cost of circa £3 billion, the programme will be delivered by Cascade Infrastructure, a consortium of partners within which bring a strong track record of delivering similar tunnelling schemes in Europe.

The programme is the first in the water sector to be delivered through a Direct Procurement for Customers model to provide best value for customers. It covers the design, construction, maintenance and financing of the scheme.

We expect main construction work to start in 2026, however we are carrying out some further site investigation and enabling works before then. Most of the work to replace the six tunnel sections will happen below ground using the latest tunnelling techniques.

For more details on this work and to view our virtual exhibition, please click the link below.

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