The collapse in investment in gas and electricity during the past three years followed a period of higher spending

The collapse in investment in gas and electricity during the past three years followed a period of higher spending in 1990-92. For example, expenditure on Sizewell increased the figure for electricity in 1990-92 but has now dropped out of the total.In addition, most experts think the industries have become more efficient since privatisation. Rod MacLean, a utilities analyst at City brokers Hoare Govett, said: “Levels of capital spending have been dropping because the companies are a lot more efficient now than they were in the past.”However, disappointing investment spending has begun to alarm industry watchdogs.The gas industry’s regulator, Claire Spottiswoode, last month announced stricter controls on TransCo, the transmission arm of British Gas, as a result of its spending nearly a third less on investment than it had promised.Her statement said: “Ofgas considers it unreasonable that customers should pay in advance for expenditure which is unlikely to occur.” British Gas estimates, probably over-pessimistically, that it could lose up to pounds 850m in revenues as a result.Stephen Littlechild, director general of Offer, the electricity regulator, announced last October that electricity companies would have to provide annual reports on their investment in the distribution network and quality of supply to customers The first of these is due to be published soon. They did not know what the regulators would do about it.”Dan Corry, an economist at the Institute for Public Policy Research, a left-leaning think-tank, said: “Regulation by price creates an incentive to skimp on investment. Once the price has been fixed, lower investment has translated directly into higher profits.One consultant who has worked closely with the electricity firms said: “Utilities have been cagey about committing funds in the years running up to a review because there are no rules. This was particularly the case with the water industry, which had suffered decades of under-investment.The Conservative Party’s Campaign Guide boasts that water companies “will have invested nearly pounds 30bn in improving Britain’s water by the end of this decade – the largest programme of investment in the industry’s history”, and that British Gas has invested pounds 15bn over the past eight years.The prices the utilities can charge take account of planned capital expenditure.

Their capital expenditure has now returned to its lowest level since 1989.Gordon Brown, the shadow Chancellor, said: “That they are cutting investment while they are making excess profits and handing out millions in share buy-backs and special dividends is further evidence that the privatised utilities are ignoring the long-term interests of consumers.”When the utilities were sold into the private sector, ministers claimed that they would be able to increase their investment programmes once they were liberated from Treasury borrowing limits. This followed declines of 5 per cent in 1993 and 13 per cent in 1994.The reduction in investment has been concentrated in the gas and electricity industries, but figures from the Office for National Statistics show that even the water companies cut their spending in 1994.If the three industries had kept their capital spending last year at the same level as the previous year, total investment spending would have been more than pounds 1bn higher. Its initial plan to raise pounds 2bn to pounds 3bn now looked too conservative, the source said.Capital spending on maintaining and modernising the nation’s infrastructure by the gas, electricity and water industries fell by nearly a fifth in real terms in 1995, according to official statistics. The slump in investment spending during the past three years occurred in the face of Government assurances that the companies would be able to spend more on improving their services following privatisation.
The Labour Party claimed the figures showed the Government’s regulatory regime had failed to stop privatised companies siphoning money earmarked for investment into excess profits.A senior Labour source indicated that in the light of this evidence the party would step up its plans for a windfall profits tax. The disclosure prompted Labour to threaten to increase dramatically the windfall tax it plans to levy from the privatised utilities. But, while other projects are being fettled, my own selfish plea is that Dame Thora be wheeled out again to take us on the gentlest of whirls through the forgotten treasures of the north of England, and, should she need a bit of help with the script, that other architecture buff, Alan Bennett, should be chivvied from his Hampstead lair to help. In the meantime, I am off to watch “Thora Hird Goes Modernist at the Midland” on the office video for the third time..

The electricity, gas and water companies slashed investment by about pounds 2bn between 1993 and 1995, according to figures obtained by the Independent. In the meantime, one hopes the BBC will keep up the renewed interest it has shown this spring. At worst, “stars” tend to dominate the proceedings, blotting even the grandest building from view with grotesque manners or inflated vowels and manners.An ideal film on architecture might have the camera moving very slowly as in scenes from Alain Resnais’s Last Year in Marienbad (1961) or Andrei Tarkovksy’s Nostalgia (1984); but, who, in the age of instant boredom, nano-second attention spans and addictive channel-hopping could watch images as slowly changing, yet as intelligently revealing as these (save, perhaps, for Victor Lewis-Smith, the sparky TV critic who claims to be entranced by the BBC2 colour test card)?In fact, what the BBC is doing is more or less the right way forward, a balance of stars and experts, gor’blimey and golly-gosh presentation, polished nostalgia with Dame Thora and intelligent thought from professional architects not being asked to be stars but doing instead what they do best – designing.Of course, there are other ways of filming architecture on television from drama (expensive) to other forms of documentary that rely more on buildings than talking heads. It remains, however, a difficult subject to tame for tiny, flickering screens. At best, an interesting presenter and a well-informed script can help, along, of course, with the best camerawork and editing skills available, to stimulate enthusiasm in buildings ancient and modern.

This series includes Germaine Greer (Glyndebourne Opera House) and Damien Hirst (Worsely Building) along with architects Will Alsop (Hauer/ King house, London), Richard Rogers (Alton Estate, Roehampton) and Zaha Hadid (Willis Corroon, Ipswich), Posy Simmonds, the cartoonist (Wood Street police station, City of London), and the poet Simon Armitage (Humber Bridge).All this adds up to a fair amount of coverage for architecture and design this spring and summer, especially when there are documentaries on William Morris and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the pipeline. This is largely because we, the viewer, are genuinely interested to see what a big-name designer makes of the kind of commission normally given to the office junior or else to an architectural practice that considers a kitchen extension to a bungalow in Bromley its Pompidou Centre or Waterloo International.A fourth new BBC2 series on architecture, Building Sights (Mondays, 8.50pm), a kind of Desert Island Buildings, begins another welcome run this spring, bringing a blend of stars and lesser-known characters and experts to the small screen. In this series, the architects are not asked to be presenters as such, but to walk and talk through the filming as if the camera, the failed batteries, the hair-in-the-gate and so on, did not exist.A technique that deflates egos, it is a modest one and works well. Street-Porter has the credentials, but the key thing is that she is seen to be taking the elitist element out of discussions on design and architecture.Piers Gough, by the way, together with Sir Norman Foster, Sir Richard Rogers, Richard MacCormac, Phillipe Starck and Nicky Haslam all appear in BBC2’s Public Property (every Tuesday), an inspired look at how leading architects, designers and decorators can tranform tiny public projects from sows’ ears to silk purses.