Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer advises lenders on £3 billion financing for the HARP project

Leading global law firm Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer has advised the lenders to the winning consortium led by Austrian contractor STRABAG and leading global investor, developer and fund manager of core infrastructure assets Equitix for the c.£3 billion financing of the Haweswater Aqueduct Resilience Programme (HARP) project for United Utilities. 

HARP is one of the largest project finance infrastructure projects in the UK to close so far in 2025 and involves upgrade works and the replacement of all six tunnel sections of the existing aqueduct’s 110-kilometre pipeline constructed between 1935 and 1955 through Cumbria, Lancashire, and Greater Manchester, the largest potable water aqueduct in the UK, on the 25-year Design-Build-Finance-Operate-Maintain (DBFOM) basis. The project will increase supplies of water into Manchester and the Pennines from the Lake District serving 2.5 million people in Greater Manchester and Lancashire and the replaced tunnels will have a design life of 120 years. 

The HARP project is procured under the Direct Procurement for Customers (DPC) model to provide the best value for customers and covers design, construction and maintenance and financing of the scheme. United Utilities will be the first water company to procure an infrastructure project under the DPC model in the future pipeline of 18 DPC projects over the next 15 years with a total estimated value of £26 billion, according to Ofwat.

The Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer team was led by partner Matthew Job, supported by partners Tom Marshall, Nick May and Tim Healey, consultant Tim Briggs, of counsel Aggie Goss and John Williams, senior associates Elizabeth Gadsby, Thomas Papworth, Vladi Resnik, Artem Soloshchenkov and Amanda Tsangalis, and associates Thomas Eldred, Konstantin Korennoy, Eni Owolabi and Sharon Don-Okhuofu, from the firm's Finance, Corporate, Construction and Regulatory teams. 

Partner and team leader Matthew Job commented: "HARP is one of the largest and most significant infrastructure project financings to reach financial close in the UK this year and we are very pleased to have acted as lender counsel on it.  Our involvement illustrates our capability and exceptional track record in both complex financings and landmark greenfield infrastructure projects.  Bilateral management of large lender groups has been a challenging characteristic of large scale project financings in recent years and the effective and efficient way that this process was managed on HARP is a testament to all involved."

Partner Tom Marshall added: "This is a landmark project for UK infrastructure and the water sector being the first to be financed using Ofwat's new Direct Procurement for Customers (DPC) model.  Whilst the DPC model has a number of common features with UK PPP, HARP is a complex project with a strong regulatory aspect requiring us to draw on not only our PPP expertise but also our extensive experience of water sector regulation and first-of-a-kind UK infrastructure projects in the water sector and more broadly."