Select committee: Industry and Regulators Committee
Conclusion 31
1st Report - The affluent and the effluent: cleaning up failures in water and sewage regulation
Published 22 Mar 2023
Paragraph 221
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)
The levels of storm overflow overuse by some companies are unacceptable. We welcome that monitors will be present on all storm overflows by the end of 2023 and that the Government has increased the Environment Agency’s funding for monitoring. However, it appears that the Agency’s monitoring and enforcement has in the past been seriously compromised by cuts to its grant, leading to an over-reliance on self-monitoring by water companies. It is crucial that the Environment Agency is provided with adequate funding to carry out inspections. Failure to do this would risk returning the regulator to a position where it must rely on water companies to police their own behaviour.
From: Industry and Regulators Committee, 1st Report - The affluent and the effluent: cleaning up failures in water and sewage regulation, paragraph 221, 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".