Minister ‘fairly fed up’ with sewage spills after water corporations issued apology

Environment Secretary Therese Coffey has admitted she is “pretty fed up” with the UK’s water corporations after they had been pressured to apologise over sewage spills.

Ms Coffey stated it was not “acceptable” that there have been 300,000 sewage spill occasions in England final yr.

Her phrases come after water and sewage corporations in England issued a public apology for “not acting quickly enough” on spills and vowed to spend £10bn to wash up their act.

Industry physique Water UK stated campaigners had been “right to be upset about the current quality of our rivers and beaches” because it introduced the package deal of funding on Thursday – which it claimed could be “the biggest modernisation of sewers since the Victorian era”.

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Asked on the Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme whether or not she was “angry” on the water corporations, the cupboard minister replied: “I’d say I’m fairly fed up with the water firms and we have seen an apology this week which is the precise factor for them to have executed.

“I think what’s important is to make sure that we have a plan and we set out a plan for water to try and tackle these issues.”

Untreated sewage was pumped into England’s rivers and seas at the least 301,091 occasions final yr – a mean of 824 a day – in response to Environment Agency (EA) information.

That represented a fall of just about a fifth on 2021’s 372,533 spills, though the EA stated that had been “largely down to dry weather, not water company action”.

Despite the announcement of £10bn funding, there was public anger after it emerged it might be paid for by prospects by means of “modest increases to their bills”.

Ruth Kelly, chair of Water UK, instructed Sky News this week that water corporations will present a “huge multi-billion down-payment” to start out “the biggest transformation project since Victorian times”.

She added: “The way the system works is that over the lifetime of the assets, customers do pay that money back in modest increases in their bills.”

Asked by Ridge whether or not invoice payers could be “picking up the tab”, Ms Coffey replied: “Through different ways it’s going to be a combination – of course penalties and fines are paid for by the company, not by the bill payer, but in terms of general payments, I think you’re right to say that a lot of this investment gets repaid through by bills and a small amount of return.”

Ms Coffey went on to say that over £30bn was paid out in dividends to shareholders when Labour was in energy from 1997 to 2010, including: “Going forward the dividends will be significantly lower than what had happened in the past.”

Ridge interjected: “Should there be dividends at all? Should they be making profits and making money at times when bill payers are the ones here who are having to pay for what has happened before?

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“Well one of many issues that Ofwat (the water regulator) does is to guarantee that any investments are deemed to be good worth for cash.

“One of the things is that penalties can end up with reimbursements to customers, but I think it’s critical to say that we are getting to grips with a situation – we unveiled that surge of sewage, and that’s why our plans I think will be effective in getting these solutions fixed.”

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Water UK stated the £10bn comes along with a earlier dedication to speculate £3.1bn, and will likely be spent this decade.

This can pay for measures together with enlarging and bettering pipes and putting in the equal of hundreds of Olympic-sized swimming swimming pools underground to carry surges in rainwater that may in any other case overload the system.

The package deal goals to chop sewage overflows by as much as 140,000 annually, in contrast with 2020 ranges.