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 hold incumbent water companies accountable for failures to address storm overflows and leakages.

The Government has made it clear that water companies must urgently tackle sewage overflows. This is set out in the Storm Overflows Reduction Plan, which represents the largest investment programme in water company history. Through increased monitoring and reporting requirements introduced in the Environment Act 2021, and priorities set through Ofwat as part of the Strategic Policy Statement to Ofwat, regulators and government will hold water companies to account. The Environment Agency and Ofwat have recently launched the largest criminal and civil investigations into water company sewage discharges ever, at over 2200 treatment works, following new data coming to light as a result of increased monitoring. Since 2015, the Environment Agency and Ofwat have brought 59 prosecutions against water companies, securing fines of over £144 million.

Water companies have performance commitments set by Ofwat that they need to meet. These include leakage and wastewater treatment work compliance. They face automatic financial penalties when these are missed. In November, Ofwat announced that almost £135 million would be returned to customers as a result of companies underperforming against their performance commitments.