Today Dean Russell MP for Watford has written to Ofwat, the water company regulator, to support proposed measures to increase their enforcement powers against companies who profit from environmental damage.
The Government has been clear, failure of water companies to stop pollution pouring into our waterways is completely unacceptable. The Environment Act 2021 created three new duties on water companies: to publish data on storm overflow operation, publish near real time information on the operation of storm overflows and to monitor the water quality upstream and downstream of storm overflows and sewage disposal works.
As such, monitoring has increased from 6% in 2016 to 100% by the end of this year, and MP’s have recently voted on draft environmental water targets to improve water quality through an achievable way. Further, the Government’s Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan will require water companies to deliver their largest ever environmental infrastructure investment - £56 billion capital investment over 25 years.
Nonetheless, despite existing licensing conditions requiring companies to publish information explaining delivery for customers, many companies did not meet these expectations.
Therefore, the MP for Watford is joining colleagues in supporting Ofwat’s recent proposals which would provide extra powers for Ofwat to take enforcement action against companies that don’t link dividend payments to their environmental performance, or those failing to be transparent about their dividend pay-outs.
Dean Russell MP said:
“The residents of Watford have been clear that they expect better from Thames Water.
They must clean up their act, tackle their pollution urgently and improve their service to customers to provide clean and plentiful water. I have previously written to the Environment Agency and Thames Water to ask what action is being taken to stop sewage being unjustly discharged into our waterways. I have been clear that this is an issue I want to see tackled and therefore supported the measures in the Environment Act 2021 to create new duties on water companies, and further enforcement powers for the Environment Agency to increase civil fines to £250 million for breach of these duties.
I have now written to Ofwat to support their proposals to link dividend payments to performance so that we can better hold them to account and improve outcomes for residents. Water companies should not be paying a single penny in dividends until they have tackled pollution and be accountable for their environmental performance.”
In 2022, the Environment Agency and Ofwat launched the largest criminal and civil investigations into water company sewage discharges ever, at over 2200 treatment works, following new data coming to light as a result of increased monitoring. Investigations look at where sites may be breaching their permits and ensure that companies found to be acting illegally are held to account, up to and including prosecution, which can lead to unlimited fines and companies having to reimburse customers. In November 2022, Ofwat announced that almost £135 million would be returned to customers as a result of companies underperforming against their performance commitments. This follows 56 prosecutions against water companies since 2015, securing fines of nearly £141 million. Future Government plans include channelling money from water company fines into environmental improvements.
ENDS
