Environment secretary says she is ‘fed up’ with water companies over sewage

Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey has said she is ‘fed up’ with the behaviour of England’s water companies amid anger over sewage discharges.

Water UK boss Ruth Kelly apologised for the state of the country’s rivers and beaches last week as she announced a £10,000,000,000 plan to modernise the sewer system.

However, the announcement was met with further criticism from campaigners after it was revealed that the clean-up scheme would be paid for through bill increases.

Last month, the government unveiled a plan to introduce legally binding targets for sewage dumping, with a view to eliminating the practice altogether by 2050.

Asked why targets were set so far in the future, Ms Coffey told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme the country was dealing with a ‘Victorian network’ that would take time to fix.

She said: ‘I have to say I’m pretty fed up with the water companies, and we’ve seen an apology this week which is the right thing for them to have done.

‘What’s important is to make sure we have a plan, we’ve set out a plan for water to try and tackle these issues.’

In just a single year, private water and sewage companies sent sewage into rivers and seas for more than 1,750,000 hours, amounting to 301,091 spillages overall (an average of 825 a day) in 2022, according to government data.

Surfers Against Sewage held a paddle-out protest at Brighton West Pier yesterday (Picture: PA)

Ms Coffey said any penalties enforced on the water companies by regulatory authority Ofwat or the Environment Agency would not be paid for through a rise in bills.

While she accepted households would be paying for the £10 billion sewage system investment, she said there were checks in place to ensure it was worth the money.

She said: ‘One of the things that Ofwat does is to make sure that any investments are deemed to be good value for money. Penalties can also end up with reimbursements to customers.

‘But I think it’s critical to say that we’re getting to grips with the situation that we have unveiled that surge of sewage, and that’s why I think our plans will be effective in getting these solutions fixed.’

Speaking to Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on BBC One, she pointed to the Thames Tideway ‘super sewer’ as an example of a multi-billion-pound project that would take more than 10 years to complete.

That investment will ‘eradicate pretty much all the need to use storm overflows in the future’, she said.

Asked about concerns raised by campaigners over the £1.4 billion in dividends paid out by the industry to shareholders last year, the secretary said new measures from Ofwat will more closely link such payments to environmental performance.

She said: ‘What’s happening going forward is the dividends will be significantly lower than happened in the past.’

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‘Going forward, the dividends will be significantly lower than happened in the past.’