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Written Question
Lake Windermere
Tuesday 8th July 2025

Asked by: Lord Clark of Windermere (Labour - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the accuracy of United Utilities' monitoring of the ecology of lake Windermere.

Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

In England, the Environment Agency (EA) undertakes monitoring and reporting on water ecology and publish these results via the ‘Water Hub’.

United Utilities (UU) monitor their discharges under Operator Self-Monitoring (OSM). The EA audits this monitoring and may take appropriate compliance and enforcement action in relation to the results of this monitoring.

UU also monitor spills from assets including Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO) via Event Duration Monitoring. The EA checks this data and the equipment used to collate it. All eight operational Wastewater Treatment works and Pumping Stations in the Windermere catchment have been inspected in the last 13 months, in some cases on multiple occasions. The EA also responds to reports of environmental incidents and takes appropriate action.

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