Severn Trent Water Authority
former UK regional water authority established in 1974, partly privatised under the Water Act 1989 to form Severn Trent Water
Severn Trent Water Authority was one of ten regional water authorities established in 1974. Its area of operation was the catchments of the River Trent and River Severn. It assumed the powers and responsibilities of existing water supply authorities in those catchment areas, the Severn River Authority, the Trent River Authority and the sewage and sewage disposal responsibilities of the councils within its area.
It took its name from the two major rivers in this area, the Severn and the Trent.
In July 1989, the authority was partly privatised under the Water Act 1989, together with most of the rest of the water supply and sewage disposal industry in England and Wales, to form Severn Trent Water, with a responsibility to supply freshwater and treat sewage for around 8 million people living in the Midlands of England and also a small area of Wales. The remaining regulatory and control functions such as pollution control, flood prevention and water resource management were subsumed into the newly formed National Rivers Authority.
Statutory water undertakers acquired
It took over the following public-sector statutory water undertakers:
Section 12 of the Water Act 1973 stated that "where the area of a water authority includes the whole or part of the limits of supply of a statutory water company, the authority shall discharge their duties with respect to the supply of water within those limits through the company." The following two private statutory water companies continued to supply water as before within their limits as supply but only as "agents" of the water authority:
East Worcestershire Waterworks Company
South Staffordshire Waterworks Company
The water authority remained responsible for sewerage and sewage disposal within the limits of supply of these two companies. On 1 September 1993, the East Worcestershire Waterworks Company was merged into Severn Trent Water as per the East Worcester and Severn Trent Water (Amendment of Local Enactments etc.) Order 1993 (SI 1993/2130)
Predecessors
Birmingham Corporation Water Department
Coventry Corporation Waterworks
Coventry Corporation Waterworks was founded by the Coventry Water Supply Act 1844 (7 & 8 Vict. c. lvi).
The public source identifies “Severn Trent Water Authority” as former UK regional water authority established in 1974, partly privatised under the Water Act 1989 to form Severn Trent Water. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Severn, Trent and Water.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q85800510. VIAF identifies the subject as 129867026. The Library of Congress control number is n79129025. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1974, 1989, 1973 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Severn Trent Water Authority” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.