ABSTRACT
Water supplies in England and Wales have to comply with revised statutory quality and monitoring requirements, incorporating the EC Drinking Water Directive values and national standards. Despite up to 99.7% of samples meeting the standards, extensive programmes are required to improve supplies to try to achieve 100% compliance, particularly for water treatment works to remove aluminium, iron and pesticide and for distribution systems for iron and related problems due to corrosion of mains. A more stringent standard for lead than in the EC Directive will require extensive investigation of possible non-compliance due to domestic plumbing materials and may necessitate water treatment remedies. The £10 billion improvement programme should remedy most of the problems by 1999 or sooner.
