Water and Sewerage Companies: Statutory Consultees

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to make water and sewerage companies and undertakings statutory consultees on major new housing developments and nationally significant infrastructure projects.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and refer to my interest as an officer of the All-Party Water Group.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, water companies must by law provide new water and sewerage connections to housing through drainage and wastewater management plans. As relevant statutory undertakers in the nationally significant infrastructure project regime, they must be consulted on relevant applications for development consent. The Government’s forthcoming guidance will promote early engagement with them. The Government have paused creating new statutory consultees in the Town and Country Planning Act regime. As part of a wider review, a consultation on streamlining this system is under way, with decisions to follow.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for that Answer. It begs the question how the Government plan to build major housing developments of 300,000 a year, many of them on flood plains with no sustainable drains, with the additional demands of the new data centres and mindful of the Environment Agency’s national framework for water resources, giving the acute warning of a deficit of water of 5 billion litres by 2050. Do the Government agree that we need to end the automatic right to connect, so that where water companies say there is simply no capacity, the development will not go ahead?