Water firms to invest £1.6bn in improvements, says Ofwat
More than £1.6bn is to be invested by water companies in England in the next two years, the regulator, Ofwat, has announced, in a victory for campaigners pushing to clean up rivers.
The investment by water companies has been brought forward to speed up projects to tackle pollution and drought.
Residents in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, fought for their river to be the first in the UK to be given bathing water status, and Yorkshire Water will now invest £67m to cut sewage leaks from wastewater treatment plants. Ilkley Clean River Group said the plans were ambitious in their timescale, aiming for improvements to be taking shape in 2026.
“This is what our years of citizen science, water testing, bathing status and holding agencies to account has got us. We are really pleased,” said Becky Malby of the Ilkley Clean River Group. “Our river is a precious resource for local people, visitors and wildlife. The collective effort of the Environment Agency, Ofwat, Yorkshire Water and local people has produced a solution that radically reduces sewage discharges and improves the quality of the water in our river now and for the future.”
The public outcry over the discharge of raw sewage into rivers has become a major political issue, with Keir Starmer accusing the government of “turning Britain’s waterways into an open sewer” last week. The latest data from the Environment Agency (EA) showed on Friday that discharges of raw sewage from storm overflows into English rivers and coastal waters happened 825 times a day last year.
United Utilities, which covers the north-west of England, was responsible for 69,000 spills last year, including a site in Cumbria that discharged sewage more than 300 times.
On Tuesday the government will announce a “plan for
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