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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many requests were made to water companies under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 in each year between 2020 and 2022; and what the total amount charged by water companies was for access to information under those regulations in the same period.

For the purposes of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, Defra is a separate legal entity to water companies. Any requests made under this regime to the water companies would have been administered by them and therefore Defra does not hold this information.