To ask the Minister for Infrastructure what support is available to connect domestic and commercial and residential dwellings in rural areas to essential utilities such as sewerage, water and electricity services.

Water and sewerage services fall within the remit of my Department and I will respond to those elements of your question. Electricity services fall within the remit of the Department for the Economy and you may wish to direct this question to the Minister for Economy.

A customer who applies to NI Water for a water main and/or sewer network requisition may be entitled to a reasonable cost allowance to assist with the cost of this. A requisition is a request for an extension of the public water main (or sewer network) to service a new property/properties, an existing property/properties or a new development. The allowance for an existing property, built before 1 January 2000, is £12,000 towards the cost of a water main requisition. The allowance for properties built after 1 January 2000 is £1,600 towards the cost of a water main requisition. The higher reasonable cost allowance is provided under the Department’s Targeting Social Needs objective to assist isolated, and older, rural dwellings, primarily because of their distance from the road and nearest water main. These allowances are available to extend the water main in cases where there is no main within 20 metres of a property. The equivalent figures for the sewer reasonable cost allowance are £2,500 for new properties constructed after 1st January 2000 and £4,000 for existing properties constructed pre 1st January 2000. Both water and sewerage reasonable cost allowances are only available to domestic customers for domestic purposes. Further information on the reasonable cost allowance and connection costs can be found in NI Water’s Scheme of Charges 2020/21, which is approved by the Utility Regulator (Microsoft Word - NI Water 2021-22 Scheme of Charges Final v2).