deal with two government departments when major capital expenditure was involved. For flood protection and land drainage schemes, the powers of the Land Drainage Act 1930 and the Land Drainage Act 1961 were largely unaltered, and the approval of the Ministry of Agriculture was required. For other capital works, it was the Department of the Environment which could sanction them. For such schemes, a regional water authority could attempt to get parliamentary approval through a private bill, but the complexities of the process meant that the preferred option was to apply for an order under the Water Act 1945. This was then dealt with by the Secretary of State for the Environment. Privatisation In 1989 the ten water authorities were privatised, with each becoming a water and sewerage company, and other responsibilities such as land drainage, river pollution prevention and control, and fisheries being passed to the National Rivers Authority, and subsequently the Environment Agency when that was created in 1995. Economic regulation of the new companies was initially managed by the Office of Water Services, which was renamed as the Water Services Regulation Authority in April 2006. Both bodies are informally known as Ofwat. Ofwat has four principal roles, which are to ensure that the interests of customers are protected, to set price limits, to ensure that the functions of the water and sewerage companies can be adequately financed and fulfilled, and to measure the standards of service and compliance with the conditions of their licences. The Environment Agency is responsible for maintaining and improving the quality of the environment, and aspects of this that affect the water and sewerage companies include monitoring their compliance with discharge consents, recording any pollution incidents that occur, and taking action and monitoring its effect when there is a pollution incident. Since 2013 these responsibilities in Wales have been held by Natural Resources Wales. Scotland The Scottish water industry has followed a different path to that in England and Wales. In 1946 local authorities were mandated to provide drinking water supplies to their communities. The first major rationalisation of the system took place as a result of the Water (Scotland) Act 1967, which created 13 Regional Water Boards, drawing together the 210 separate organisations that had been responsible for water supply in 1945. Although they worked well on a technical level, the issues of funding had not been adequately addressed. Because the cost