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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to regulate water companies operating in protected landscapes to help prevent environmental harm.

This Government will continue to work with regulators to hold water companies to account on poor performance and drive improvements which benefit customers and the environment. The Water (Special Measures) Act delivers on our manifesto commitment to put water companies under special measures by strengthening regulation to clean up our waters.

Through water resource management plans and regional water resources plans we are addressing unsustainable abstraction and protecting the environment from climate change over the next 25 years and beyond. These plans include action to protect England’s precious and unique chalk stream habitats, reducing abstraction by nearly 3 billion litres a day by 2050.

Nutrient pollution from wastewater is one of the key pressures affecting our rivers, lakes, and seas. There is a legally binding target under the Environment Act 2021 to reduce phosphorus loadings from treated wastewater by 80% by 2038 against a 2020 baseline. We will require water companies to upgrade 440 wastewater treatment works by 2030, to meet stricter phosphorus permit limits, reducing harmful nutrient pollution from treated wastewater. In Price Review 2024 final determinations, Ofwat has allowed £4.795bn of investment to improve water quality by reducing phosphorus pollution in England and Wales.

Furthermore, as part of the record £11bn of investment to improve nearly 3,000 storm overflows in England and Wales during Price Review 2024, with 75% of such High Priority Sites needing to be improved by 2035 and the rest by 2045. By 2050, we expect no storm overflow spill to cause any adverse ecological harm and spill no more than 10 times per year.