AMP8: Can the water sector actually spend £104 billion by 2030?

The traditional five-year AMP cycle creates a familiar challenge, with the opening period often treated as “Year 0”, with water companies finalising allocations and awarding frameworks while physical delivery appears slow. However, AMP8’s early mobilisation has been encouraging. United Utilities delivered £1.5 billion of capital investment during the first year of AMP8 and mobilised more than 100 supply-chain partners. Anglian invested £1.1 billion and worked across more than 1,100 capital projects, more than double its annual delivery rate during AMP7. 

Elsewhere, mobilisation has been more uneven. Five companies challenged Ofwat’s price determination through the Competition and Markets Authority, seeking £2.7 billion of additional revenue. The CMA’s March 2026 ruling allowed only £463 million, leaving companies to reassess the timing and scope of elements of their investment programmes. Thames Water withdrew from the CMA process amid its wider financial restructuring, and uncertainty over its long-term funding continues to constrain confidence in delivery. Contractors and consultants working across AMP8 have described a first year marked less by resource shortage than by stop-start activity and warned as early as late 2025 that the sector was already behind where it needed to be.

Taken together, these examples show a sector diverging rather than moving uniformly. The truth is that the bulk of the actual work will be delivered once planning, design and procurement have been completed. That anticipated acceleration is already flowing through to the supply chain and shaping M&A activity. Water- and wastewater-adjacent service businesses are seeing an uptick in investor demand, as buyers move to acquire access and capacity ahead of the true delivery phase of AMP8. 

Skilled labour is a key driver of M&A demand. Estimates suggest that more than 100,000 additional workers will be required to deliver AMP8 commitments and replace an ageing engineering workforce. Experienced technical specialists are already in short supply, with water companies and contractors competing for the same design engineers, project managers, commissioning specialists and mechanical and electrical engineers. This challenge extends across the wider infrastructure sector, with energy, transport and other major programmes all drawing from the same talent pool. Businesses that already possess these specialist capabilities, particularly those with strong graduate and apprenticeship pipelines, will be well placed to secure work and command a premium. 

The uncomfortable reality is that much of AMP8 will ultimately be funded by consumers. At a time when household bills remain under pressure, customers are being asked to pay more to fix infrastructure that has been ageing for decades. That creates a difficult balance. Water companies need the funding, but consumers will expect to see results in return, and those results are arriving unevenly. 

United Utilities and Anglian Water have so far provided clearer evidence that increased funding is translating into physical delivery. Elsewhere, financial uncertainty, regulatory disputes and operational underperformance continue to create less certainty over the pace and impact of investment. The government has committed to replacing Ofwat with a new integrated regulator, although the replacement has not yet been established and the sector is still waiting for clarity on how the new system will operate. 

Whether AMP8 spending is delivered is therefore too broad a question. The first year suggests that outcomes will vary materially by utility. United Utilities and Anglian demonstrate what full-pace delivery can look like when funding, frameworks and supply chains align. Thames Water demonstrates how financial instability can undermine confidence in even the most ambitious capital programme, while the companies involved in the CMA process must now adapt their plans to the final settlement. As AMP8 moves into its main construction phase, the gap between leading and lagging utilities may widen before it begins to close. 

For well-positioned infrastructure services businesses, the opportunity should still broaden across engineering, treatment, maintenance, monitoring and specialist environmental services. The near-term returns will go to those exposed to the companies already converting commitments into delivery. For acquirers, the window to secure exposure to AMP8 spending is narrowing, with the structural investment requirement expected to extend into AMP9 and beyond.

As the window to secure exposure to AMP8 spending narrows, acquiring specialist delivery capability and workforce capacity is becoming a defining feature of M&A across water and wider infrastructure services. Heligan's Corporate Finance team works with infrastructure business owners to understand how buyers are likely to value capability, track record and growth potential well ahead of any process. Get in touch to discuss what this could mean for your business.