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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to improve water quality in the River Brent.

Government is committed to improving water quality. In August 2022 we published our £56 billion plan to reduce sewage discharges. To tackle agricultural pollution, in November we launched a grant scheme to improve slurry storage on farms, alongside the £17 million expansion of our Catchment Sensitive Farming programme. In December we announced our ambitious suite of legally binding Environment Act targets including four targets to address pressures on the water environment and published the updated River Basin Plans which target specific action to improve all of our rivers and catchments, including the Brent, were published.

The Environment Agency (EA) is working closely with partners in the Brent Catchment Partnership and Thames Water to deliver river improvement projects throughout the catchment. This includes both work to assess the impact Combined Sewer Overflow discharges have on the water quality of the River Brent and the restoration of overly modified sections of the Brent and its tributaries to allow for a more natural flow regime, flood performance benefits, and biodiversity enhancements.