Select committee: Industry and Regulators Committee
Conclusion 48
1st Report - The affluent and the effluent: cleaning up failures in water and sewage regulation
Published 22 Mar 2023
Paragraph 296
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)
Some witnesses told us the introduction of private equity ownership to the water sector has been a driver in some companies focusing on financial performance rather than service delivery and securing resilience. This has led some privately owned companies to take on debt and introduce complex financial structures in order to pay out large returns, even where performance has been unacceptable. Requiring water companies to disclose information to the same standard as publicly listed companies has the potential to improve their governance and increase scrutiny of their financial arrangements.
From: Industry and Regulators Committee, 1st Report - The affluent and the effluent: cleaning up failures in water and sewage regulation, paragraph 296, 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".