Select committee: Industry and Regulators Committee
Conclusion 13
1st Report - The affluent and the effluent: cleaning up failures in water and sewage regulation
Published 22 Mar 2023
Paragraph 121
Industry and Regulators Committee The work of Ofwat All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
Strategic, nationally significant infrastructure projects should be delivered outside of the Price Review process. The special purpose vehicle approach used for the Thames Tideway project provides a useful alternative model for funding such projects, reducing capital costs and spreading them over a longer timeframe than the five-year Price Review. Ofwat’s Direct Procurement for Customers model provides an opportunity for larger projects to be carried across multiple Price Review periods and is a useful outlet, but the expansion of the Thames Tideway model is more desirable as this allows Ofwat to intervene more effectively through the licence that can be applied to the new investment.
From: Industry and Regulators Committee, 1st Report - The affluent and the effluent: cleaning up failures in water and sewage regulation, paragraph 121, 22 March 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 5 June 2023 (deadline 22 May 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government points to its Plan for Water and Environmental Improvement Plan as addressing many of the Committee's recommendations, and responds to each recommendation in turn, with some positions stated and others referred to those plans.
- On the Strategic Policy Statement, the Government "does not intend to update the SPS", citing Ofwat's ongoing 2024 Price Review process (PR24).
- On a single social tariff, the response states "There are no plans to introduce a single social tariff".
- On wet wipes, the Government says it "will change the law to ban the sale of wet wipes containing plastic, subject to public consultation".
- On storm overflows, the Government says it has committed to review the Discharge Reduction Plan in 2027, so that companies "remain as ambitious as possible, while balancing the impact on bills".