North West Water
English water company
North West Water was a water supply, sewage disposal and sewage treatment company serving North West England. It was established as the North West Water Authority in 1973, and became North West Water plc in 1989, as part of the privatisation of the water industry in England and Wales. In 1995, it merged with NORWEB (the former North Western Electricity Board) to form United Utilities.
North West Water Authority
The North West Water Authority was one of ten regional authorities created by the Water Act 1973. It was formed from the merger of statutory water undertakings, local sewerage boards and three river authorities, these being the Mersey and Weaver River Authority, the Lancashire River Authority and the Cumberland River Authority.
The water undertakings subsumed into North West Water authority by the North West Water Authority Constitution Order 1973 (SI 1973/1287) included:
Municipal corporations
Water boards
The sewage treatment, sewerage and water supply and distribution arms of the authority were privatised in July 1989, becoming North West Water plc. The remaining regulatory functions of the authority, including pollution prevention, fisheries management, flood control, water resource management and a number of other ancillary functions, were transferred to the newly formed National Rivers Authority.
The water supply sewage disposal and sewerage assets, which were previously held by the water authority and covered some 56,000 hectares (220 sq miles), were transferred to North West Water at privatisation.
Predecessors
Bolton Corporation Waterworks
The Bolton Corporation Waterworks was established in 1847 when Bolton Corporation purchased the Bolton Waterworks Company.
In 1963 part of the Irwell Valley Water Board and the Bacup Corporation Waterworks were merged into the Bolton Corporation Waterworks by the Bolton Water Order 1962 (SI 1963/209).
The public source identifies “North West Water” as english water company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around North, West and Water.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7057331. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1989, 1995 and 1287.
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This entry incorporates text from “North West Water” 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.