Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether Ofwat's final determination for each company separates out anticipated spend on (a) direct procurement for customer projects and (b) specified infrastructure project regulations projects.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The development costs of funding Direct Procurement for Customer (DPC) schemes and Specified Infrastructure Project Regulations (SIPR) projects have been included in company business plans, as set out in Ofwat’s Major Projects Appendix. Funding is set out at individual project level and is identified as a DPC or SIPR (please see page 9). Almost all the schemes are funded via DPC and these account for £2.1 billion of development funding in PR24, and circa £50 billion whole life costs.
DPC is funded separately to enhancement expenditure. The capital costs of DPC will be spread over time and funded in addition to customer bill impacts forecast through the business plan submissions. DPC costs in the main will not occur in the next investment period (2025-2030), as DPC costs are passed through to customers once assets become operational.
Customer bills between 2025 and 2030 will include funding for the Haweswater Aqueduct Resilience Programme for United Utilities (delivered via DPC) and the Thames Tideway Tunnel (delivered via SIPR). Thames Water customer bills have included impacts from this scheme since 2015.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether the headline water bill for the 2024 price review period includes the cost of (a) direct procurement for customer and (b) specified infrastructure projects regulations schemes.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The development costs of funding Direct Procurement for Customer (DPC) schemes and Specified Infrastructure Project Regulations (SIPR) projects have been included in company business plans, as set out in Ofwat’s Major Projects Appendix. Funding is set out at individual project level and is identified as a DPC or SIPR (please see page 9). Almost all the schemes are funded via DPC and these account for £2.1 billion of development funding in PR24, and circa £50 billion whole life costs.
DPC is funded separately to enhancement expenditure. The capital costs of DPC will be spread over time and funded in addition to customer bill impacts forecast through the business plan submissions. DPC costs in the main will not occur in the next investment period (2025-2030), as DPC costs are passed through to customers once assets become operational.
Customer bills between 2025 and 2030 will include funding for the Haweswater Aqueduct Resilience Programme for United Utilities (delivered via DPC) and the Thames Tideway Tunnel (delivered via SIPR). Thames Water customer bills have included impacts from this scheme since 2015.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what the planned spend on Direct Procurement for Customer schemes is for each water company.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The development costs of funding Direct Procurement for Customer (DPC) schemes and Specified Infrastructure Project Regulations (SIPR) projects have been included in company business plans, as set out in Ofwat’s Major Projects Appendix. Funding is set out at individual project level and is identified as a DPC or SIPR (please see page 9). Almost all the schemes are funded via DPC and these account for £2.1 billion of development funding in PR24, and circa £50 billion whole life costs.
DPC is funded separately to enhancement expenditure. The capital costs of DPC will be spread over time and funded in addition to customer bill impacts forecast through the business plan submissions. DPC costs in the main will not occur in the next investment period (2025-2030), as DPC costs are passed through to customers once assets become operational.
Customer bills between 2025 and 2030 will include funding for the Haweswater Aqueduct Resilience Programme for United Utilities (delivered via DPC) and the Thames Tideway Tunnel (delivered via SIPR). Thames Water customer bills have included impacts from this scheme since 2015.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the financial implications for her policies of trends in the level of debt acquired by water companies.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Shadow Minister (Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Water companies are allowed to raise debt to fund the delivery of their services.
Ofwat, as the independent economic regulator, assesses and monitors the financial resilience of each company, including levels of debt, on an individual and ongoing basis and challenges companies where they identify this is needed.
Over recent years, as investment requirements have risen, Ofwat has taken further steps to strengthen the financial resilience of companies. This includes increasing its financial monitoring and improving levels of reporting transparency. As part of this work, Ofwat produces an annual ‘Monitoring Financial Resilience Report’ to provide a publicly available assessment of the financial resilience of each water company.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much their Department spent on hospitality in (a) 2021, (b) 2022 and (c) 2023.
Answered by Mark Spencer
We do not routinely publish this data, as has been the case under successive administrations. All Business Units within the Department have a responsibility to keep official hospitality costs as low as possible and demonstrate good value for money. Details of ministerial and senior official hospitality are published on a quarterly basis, and are available on GOV.UK.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what data her Department holds on the amount of time taken to inform candidates applying for jobs at the Environment Agency of the outcome of their application and whether they have been called for interview in each of the last five years.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The average time taken to inform candidates of the outcome of their application to a job advertised at the Environment Agency for each of the past full five calendar years is shown in the table below.
The data is for the period between the advert close date and the date the applicant was notified of the outcome of their application. The outcome of the application is either for the applicant to be invited to interview or for them to be informed that they have not been invited to interview
Year | Average time taken in working days for applicant to be notified of the outcome of an EA job application |
2018 | 14.6 |
2019 | 12.7 |
2020 | 16.0 |
2021 | 12.7 |
2022 | 12.7 for posts advertised using the established EA recruitment system 13.7 for selected posts that have used a different recruitment system for part of 2022 |
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what was the average time taken for an environmental permit application to be processed in each year from 2015 to 2023 inclusive.
Answered by Rebecca Pow
The average time taken to process applications in each year between 2015 and 2023 is shown below. This covers applications across Water Abstraction, Discharge to Water, Waste and Industrial Processes. There is a widely varying level of complexity in the applications determined which means drawing statistical comparisons across such a wide range doesn’t accurately account for the different requirements.
It is important to note that many application types have seen legislative change and increases in complexity during this time period, making year on year comparison difficult. The Environment Agency have seen a reduction in application quality during this time, requiring additional processing by their permitting department. Backlogs were built up during 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic which the Environment Agency have now largely recovered and they expect 2023/24 to see a reduction in average times.
Year Average of KPI3 (Days):
2015 - 41
2016 - 53
2017 - 64
2018 - 60
2019 - 72
2020 - 89
2021 - 85
2022 - 106
2023 - 107
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much his Department spent on taxi cabs for (a) ministers and (b) civil servants in each of the last three years.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The following table sets out expenditure on taxis in each of the given years. A split by ministers and civil servants could not be obtained on this occasion without incurring disproportionate costs.
Year | Taxi Spend (£) |
2019 | 143,210.25 |
2020 | 30,288.49 |
2021 | 19,898.34 |
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much his Department spent on first class train travel for (a) ministers and (b) civil servants in (i) 2020, (i) 2021 and (iii) 2022.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The tables below set out the expenditure on first class train travel in each of the given years.
(a) Ministers
Year | Total Cost (£) | Number of Journeys |
2020 | £564 | 3 |
2021 | £285 | 2 |
2022 to date | £0 | 0 |
(b) Civil Servants
Year | Total Cost (£) | Number of Journeys |
2020 | £1,550 | 13 |
2021 | £2,066 | 13 |
2022 to date | £3,345 | 20 |
The department's travel and subsistence policy permits first class travel in a very limited number of circumstances, such as accompanying a Minister or due to a disability. Such travel requires a strong business justification and prior approval by a senior civil servant.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much his Department has spent on (a) agency workers and (b) agency retainer fees in (i) 2020, (ii) 2021 and (iii) 2022.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
(a) agency workers
Agency workers (more commonly referred to as “contingent labour” or “temporary workers”) are subject to a Cabinet Office controls framework to ensure robust governance of spending in this area.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contingent-labour-spend-control
Commentary on contingent labour usage, if applicable, is available in departmental annual reports.
The Crown Commercial Service provides two frameworks specifically for the supply of Contingent Labour which are used by central government departments. These are:
RM3749 - Public Sector Resourcing.
https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/agreements/rm3749
This provides a managed service for departmental use including low supplier margins, regular pay rate benchmarking, comprehensive tracking and reporting of contingent labour assignments, full timesheeting and approvals technology and onboarding, contracting and payroll services.
RM6160 - Non Clinical Temporary and Fixed Term Staff
https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/agreements/RM6160
This provides access to a range of generalist, specialist and niche contingent labour agencies offering a wide range of suppliers, maximum margins, free transfer to permanent after 12 weeks and onboarding, contracting and payroll services.
Use of these frameworks provides robust governance, visibility, value for money and flexibility in meeting departmental contingent labour needs.
(b) agency retainer fees
We have interpreted agency retainer fees as the fees charged at the commencement of the provision of a search recruitment service. This is only applicable when recruiting for a permanent or fixed term post.
Agency retainer fees are not applicable to the contingent labour market.
There is no recorded expenditure on agency retainer fees.