UK water watchdog told: ‘Be a bulldog not a lapdog’

The body that is responsible for clean rivers, lakes and coastal waters across the UK should become a ‘bulldog instead of a lapdog’ to the water industry, says the Head of Policy at the Angling Trust, the organisation that represents anglers in England and Wales.

Martin Salter was speaking following the introduction of the Water Industry Special Measures Bill, which will give the Environment Agency more resources to regulate the UK’s water industry which last year was responsible for discharging untreated sewage into the nation’s rivers, waterways and coasts for 3.6 million hours.

The news was welcomed by the Angling Trust, which has warned that the Government needs to go much further if Britain’s ‘sewage scandal’ is to be resolved and will be joining with other environmental groups in calling for a root and branch review of the industry and how it should be reformed and regulated in the future.

Salter said: “We need the Environment Agency (EA) to become a bulldog instead of a lapdog of the water industry and we hope these long overdue and much needed reforms will reset that relationship. The Government needs to accept that the entire sector is broken and simply unfit to deal with the 21^st century challenges that arise from a growing population in an era of climate change and extreme weather patterns.

“The Angling Trust wants to see the huge fines that are rightly levied on polluting water companies used for solving problems and not as another windfall tax for the Treasury. They could be used to direct specific capital investment to repair habitat and to fund better regulation. Polluters must be held responsible for fixing their own mess.”

The Water Industry Special Measures Bill, which was laid before Parliament last week, contains much-needed provision to allow the EA to recover the costs of prosecutions and enforcement from water companies rather than the taxpayer. Figures from last year’s Environmental Performance Assessment revealed 2,174 pollution incidents involving water companies, 47 of which were very serious and 38 involving three water companies – Thames Water, Southern Water and Anglian Water. However, just four prosecutions took place in the year due to lack of resources.

Jamie Cook, CEO of the Angling Trust, added: “The angling community has been at the forefront of calling for tougher regulation, so we welcome the long overdue introduction of the principal of cost recovery from polluters in the new Bill along with other measures to increase penalties, create transparency and improve corporate conduct in the broken water industry.

“Wherever possible it should be the polluter that pays rather than the taxpayer. However, this can only be regarded as a first step and we look forward to seeing more transformational change and a root and branch upgrade of Britain’s creaking and leaking wastewater infrastructure.”