 Water Services Boards are responsible for asset management, that is, for the development and rehabilitation of water and sewerage facilities, for investment planning and implementation.When the WSBs were established, they were criticised as "an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy" that lead to a "conflation of roles" because they are "both regulators (alongside the WSRB) and market actors" as well as "monoliths... that are far away from the point of service".WSBs operate under licenses, but the licensing regime has been criticised as "bureaucratic, cumbersome and confusing."