Government Vision for Water Announced

With public awareness at an all time high and water industry action an all time low, the Government has never had a stronger mandate to fix the water system. For the past 18 months, they have been promising to “reform the water sector” and this week they set out just how they would do it.

But unfortunately, the Governments ‘New Vision For Water’, has fallen rather flat. Touted as the biggest shake up in the water industry since privatisation, we were calling on the Government to make it count by ensuring public health and the environment were placed as the top priority for water companies. Despite presenting the Government with the opportunity of a generation, they’ve fluffed it. The 50 page plan is a vague skirting of the issue, making broad brush statements which lock us into the same old profit driven pollution machine.

In this blog, we’ve cut through their spin so that you don’t have to. 

What the Government wants you to know 

• They plan to reshape regulators, bringing together the existing regulators into one with fewer, more joined up goals. 

• They are hoping to create a regional water body which focuses on water company regions, bringing together local actors on water. 

• They are calling for longer term planning from water companies. Companies are now required to plan up to 25 years ahead, rather than the current 5.

Our key take aways 

• The vision is a raft of vague statements which nod towards our calls but fall short of doing them. 

• There is a new requirement for the new regulator to hold the environment and public health as its priority. A good start but a way away from requiring this from water companies themselves. This bakes in profit as the key driver for water companies, at the expense of blue spaces and everyone who uses them. 

• The paper regularly mentions public health but it holds little in substance as to how they intend to improve it. The Government admit “People should not need to check the level of sewage discharge at their local beach before deciding whether to make the trip.” We agree! But they haven’t set out how they plan to do it. 

• We have been calling for the Government to make use of its existing power to take failing water companies back into their hands using their Special Administration Regime. However in their Vision, they have instead placed another step in this process, pushing the consequences for failing companies further away and continuing to allowing them to pollute scott free. 

• The Government have committed to some promising reforms to better regulate the financing of the industry. This includes making the regulator set agree percentages of return for investors so they can’t amp up their dividends to the levels we have seen over the past 30 years. There are also interesting proposals around the provision of Green Bonds to Water Companies which would be a step towards linking dividend payments with environmental performance, but the devil here will be in the detail. 

How do commitments compare to our calls? 

We were calling for:

1. Legal priority to protect public and environmental health  

Whilst we’ve seen this priority given to regulators, we are yet to see this as a requirement for the water companies themselves. It’s time companies put public and environmental health at the top of the legal agenda, where it belongs.  

2. Democratic decision making  

There has been a commitment to produce regional water bodies, the jury’s out on whether this will represent the public and so we will continue to campaign for these new bodies to do just that. 

3. Value for money  

There was little mention of value for money in the Vision. The Government did commit to a new water ombudsmen to represent the public when there have been significant failures. But water companies need to have delivery requirements baked into their finances, ensuring customers money pays for the service they expect. 

4. Tough independent regulators  

The significant plans to change the regulator should make it easier to hold water companies to account but the proof here will be in the pudding. Will it be resourced enough and have the teeth it needs to hold polluters to account?

5. Transparency  

There was little mention of transparency in the ‘Vision’, we how that a more effective regulator will support greater transparency but with little mention of this in the governments plan, we don’t know if it has being passed by. 

What we can expect next? 

The new plan has significantly pushed back the Governments timeline for taking action. Having previously promised a Water Reform Bill to be launched in Parliament before the summer, we are now only expecting it before they finish their time in Parliament, this could be as late as 2029.

They have also promised a Transition Plan which will include more details of how they will deliver some of their commitments in their Vision, yet this is another delay in the chain, raising concerns that plans for reform won’t even be brought into water companies next 5 year planning cycle meaning we might only be expect to see the promised changes in 2035. This timeline frankly isn’t good enough and we will be pushing government to go further and faster. 

Worse still, the Government aren’t even intending on consulting the public on their new plans. That is why we intend to ask you what you think. Soon, we will be giving you the opportunity to feedback what you think of the Governments plans.