Leaked records suggest one firm, United Utilities, wrongly downgraded dozens of pollution events, including at a famed English lake in north-west England.

The Environment Agency signed off all the downgrades without attending any of the incidents.

United Utilities denies misreporting pollution.

Water companies in England are set environmental targets by the regulator, Ofwat. One of the key benchmarks is the number of pollution incidents per 10,000km of sewer. These are typically sewage discharges into rivers or the sea, caused by blockages or equipment failure.

The companies have to pay fines if they exceed a given number of pollution incidents, and are given financial rewards if they come in below.

According to the Environment Agency’s figures, United Utilities was the best performing company in England in 2022. It recorded just 126 pollution incidents, or 16/10,000km of sewer.

As a reward for this good performance, the company will be allowed to raise £5.1m by increasing bills for its seven million customers next year.

But whistleblowers at the Environment Agency claim the company has been wrongly downgrading pollution incidents and that the agency is failing to conduct independent checks.

One insider told Panorama that United Utilities was “controlling the evidence” on pollution.

When pollution incidents are reported to the Environment Agency, it assesses the potential impact and decides whether to attend.

From 2020 through to the end of 2022, there were 931 reported water company pollution incidents in north-west England, and the Environment Agency only attended six.

“If they [United Utilities] say attend – which is incredibly rare – we’ll attend,” said the whistleblower. “If they say don’t attend, we don’t attend. They’re effectively regulating themselves.”

Panorama has obtained 200 reports about pollution incidents at United Utilities’ sewage works in 2022.

In more than 60 of these cases, the company appears to have wrongly downgraded the incidents to the lowest level, category 4.

They were all signed off by the Environment Agency.

Category 4 incidents are not counted in published figures because they are supposed to have had no environmental impact. Only more serious categories 1-3 are counted.

The Environment Agency guidance says category 4 should only be used where either pollution doesn’t get into the water course, or where it is of such insignificance that it doesn’t have an impact, for example a “trickle into a large water course”.

The incidents identified by the programme were all more than a “trickle” and appear to have had an impact.

Two experienced water pollution officers, who can’t be identified because they work for the Environment Agency, independently reviewed the documents for Panorama. They agreed that none should have been classified as category 4.

If the 60 cases identified by Panorama were wrongly downgraded, then United Utilities should not have been awarded its £5m bonus for reducing pollution incidents last year.

One of the apparent cover-ups was in a World Heritage Site in the Lake District. In June 2022, a fault led to raw sewage being pumped into the middle of Windermere. The incident went on for more than three hours.

The leaked documents show it was initially thought to be a serious category 2 incident, but the Environment Agency didn’t attend and United Utilities downgraded it to category

The Environment Agency insider said it was a serious incident, and that a huge volume of polluted material had been pumped into a water body: “The water company don’t want us to attend and then an incident like this gets downgraded to a low level or, effectively, gets kept off the books.”

United Utilities initially denied that sewage had been pumped into the middle of the lake and said that tests conducted on the shoreline showed the pollution had no impact.

But company documents obtained by Panorama prove the sewage was discharged into the middle of Windermere.

Mark Garth, the company’s director of wastewater treatment, told the programme: “I do accept that on this occasion sewage ended up in the lake as a result of that failure.”

Another potential cover-up identified by Panorama was at the Wallasey pumping station on the River Mersey in Liverpool last November.

Once again, the leaked documents show it was initially thought to be a serious category 2 incident, but the Environment Agency didn’t attend and United Utilities downgraded it to category 4.

United Utilities says it is false to suggest it misreports pollution incidents and that the final categorisations are decided by the EA.

“We work extremely hard to get on top of pollution and we’re extremely proud of our performance,” said Mr Garth.

“We continue to do that and covering it up or misguiding the Environment Agency in any way is absolutely no part of that performance.”

The company said the Wallasey incident was a category 4, because the pollution was diluted by the large volume of water in the Mersey and then the Irish Sea.

The Environment Agency declined to be interviewed for the programme, but said in a statement that some monitoring of water companies could be done remotely.

“We take our responsibility to protect the environment very seriously,” it said. “We respond to every incident and always attend those where there is a significant risk.”

The agency said regulations were being strengthened and that it would soon have new powers to deliver civil penalties that are quicker and easier to enforce.

It is currently conducting its largest ever criminal investigation into potential widespread non-compliance by the water companies, including United Utilities.

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Chris Packham challenges government for net zero policy delays

The broadcaster Chris Packham has filed a High Court legal challenge to the government against a decision to weaken key climate policies.

Lydia Patrick www.independent.co.uk

Packham, a veteran environmental campaigner, has applied for a judicial review of the government’s decision to ditch the timetable for phasing out petrol and diesel powered cars and vans and a delay to the phase-out of new gas boilers.

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said it rejects Packham’s claims and will “robustly” defend the challenge.

The measures and their schedule had been set out in the government’s Carbon Budget Delivery Plan, which was put before parliament in March.

In September, Rishi Sunak announced he would delay the ban on selling new diesel and petrol cars from 2030 to 2035 and that 20 per cent of households will be exempt from a new gas boiler ban, arguing that he does not want to burden ordinary people with the costs.

Following the announcement, Packham wrote to the prime minister, the energy secretary and the transport secretary to challenge the decision, arguing that Mr Sunak does not have the legal right to change the timeline of carbon budget pledges at will, since the actioning of the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan is governed by statute.

Packham said he did not receive a satisfactory response to his letter and, therefore, filed the judicial review application at the High Court.

He added that the government’s response to his letter made clear that the decision was made without any public consultation, without informing the Climate Change Committee, without informing parliament and without providing any reasons for the delays to the policies.

The legal challenge cites the requirement to have plans in place to meet the budgets if the proposals and policies within them are altered.

Packham argues that the secretaries of state have breached this obligation by not confirming or outlining how they still intend to meet the latest budget.

The legal challenge also alleges that there was a failure to consult on the changes, particularly a failure to take into account ongoing consultations about off-grid heating and minimum energy efficiency in rental properties.

It also claims that the decisions were based on misinformation, such as the government’s argument that the UK’s “over delivery” on previous greenhouse gas reduction targets meant that some measures were no longer needed, that carbon budgets “impose unacceptable costs on hard-pressed British families … that no-one was ever told about” and that the latest budget was “voted through with barely any consideration given the hard choices needed to fulfil it”.

Packham argues that this messaging is wrong, because under section 10 of the Climate Change Act, the financing and social impact of the policies were taken into account when setting the sixth carbon budget.

The legal challenge also alleges that there was a breach of the duty to inform the public of the reasons for the decisions to change the policies.

Packham said: “We are in a crisis which threatens the whole world, everything living is in danger, including all of us.

“We have the potential to reduce that threat, we have the solutions and we have plans and targets. We must not divert from these.

“To do so on a whim for short-term political gain is reckless and betrays a disregard for the future security of the planet.”

Packham argued that the emissions reductions from the vehicle and gas boiler policies were “intrinsically important to the UK’s ability to reach somewhere near its net zero commitments”.

Rowan Smith, a solicitor at Leigh Day, said: “If the government’s lawyers are correct, then the secretary of state would have carte blanche to rip up climate change policy at the drop of the hat, without any repercussions whatsoever.

“That’s why this legal challenge is so important: if successful, it will mean that the secretary of state has to keep to their promises to have in place policies that will enable carbon budgets to be met.”

It comes after a successful legal challenge by Friends of the Earth that the 2021 sixth carbon budget did not include sufficient detail in order to demonstrate how the UK would reach net zero by 2050 as the Climate Change Act 2008 says it must.

A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: “We strongly reject these claims and will be robustly defending this challenge.

“We have overdelivered on every carbon budget to date and these changes keep us on track to meet our legal net zero commitments. We routinely publish future emissions projections across all sectors and will continue to do so.

“Households will now have more time to make the transition saving some families thousands of pounds at a time when cost of living is high.”

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New neighbourhood area for East Devon parish

An East Devon village can now have more of a say over future housing and other development in its back yard.

Will Goddard, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk

West Hill Parish Council had applied for its whole patch to be designated a ‘neighbourhood area’ for planning purposes.

It will now be able to produce its own plan setting out how the community would like to see it develop, after East Devon District Council’s cabinet gave it the go-ahead last week.

West Hill was previously part of a joint neighbourhood with Ottery St Mary.

The West Hill and Ottery St Mary parishes will now be split into two such areas, with Ottery St Mary also able to create its own separate neighbourhood plan if it wishes.

EDDC carried out a public consultation for six weeks and received no objections from the public or Ottery St Mary Town Council.

The existing joint Ottery St Mary and West Hill neighbourhood plan, created in 2018, will stay in place across both parishes until it is replaced.

New neighbourhood plans would see wide consultation with the community and be voted on by people in the relevant areas.

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Thames Water told by auditors it could run out of money by April

When the Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher sold off the water industry in 1989, the government wrote off all debts amounting to £5bn and granted the water companies a further £1.5bn of public money, known as a “green dowry”.

Miles Brignall www.theguardian.com

The parent company of Thames Water has been warned by its auditors that it could run out of money by April if shareholders do not inject more cash into the debt-laden firm.

In accounts signed off in July and published on the Companies House website last week, PricewaterhouseCoopers said there was “material uncertainty” about whether the main company behind the water supplier can continue as a going concern.

The disclosure was made in the 2022-23 accounts of Kemble Water Holdings, the company at the top of Thames Water’s byzantine ownership structure.

PwC made its assertion after noting that there were no firm arrangements in place to refinance a £190m loan at one of its subsidiary companies.

Thames Water is expected to face further scrutiny over its debt levels when it issues its results on Tuesday, and a possible investigation into whether it misled MPs earlier this year.

In June, it emerged that contingency plans for the collapse of Thames Water were being drawn up by the UK government amid fears that Britain’s biggest water company would not survive because of its huge debt pile.

Sir Robert Goodwill, chair of the environment, food and rural affairs select committee, said it was considering a fresh investigation after the Financial Times reported that Thames Water had originally presented a loan from its shareholders to its parent as new equity funding.

Alastair Cochran, chief financial officer at Thames Water, told MPs in July that its “incredibly supportive” shareholders “have already provided £500m of equity this year, in March, which was fully drawn by the company”.

However, according to the Kemble accounts, the investment had come in the form of a £515m convertible loan reportedly charging 8% interest per year.

The accounts highlights the complicated web of companies behind the water supplier. In early 2023, Kemble Water Holdings issued £515m of convertible loan notes to its shareholders, translating into £500m after fees, and this money was then “cascaded” through various parts of the group before eventually ending up with Thames Water Utilities Limited – the regulated company that supplies water and sewerage services to about 15m households in London and across the Thames valley area.

Last week the Liberal Democrats called for a public inquiry into both Thames Water and Ofwat.

A spokesperson for Thames Water told the Guardian that the water supply business was ringfenced and that customers’ supplies would be unaffected by any behind-the-scenes changes to the business structure.

“We are in a robust financial position and are extremely fortunate to have such supportive shareholders,” said the spokesperson. “Our shareholders have already invested £500m of equity in 2023. In addition, they have agreed to provide a further £750m in new equity funding across AMP7 [the water industry asset management plan period running from 2020 to 2025].

“This further funding is subject to satisfaction of certain conditions, including the preparation of a business plan that underpins a more focused turnaround that delivers targeted performance improvements for customers, the environment and other stakeholders over the next three years and is supported by appropriate regulatory arrangements.”

Kemble Water Holdings declined to comment.

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Conservative Minister is urged to correct the Commons record after saying people’s taxes are falling

Laura Trott didn’t provide proof of claim that taxes had gone down since 2010

A treasury minister has been urged to correct the record in Parliament after claiming that people’s taxes are falling.

Anna Mikhailova www.dailymail.co.uk

Laura Trott, the new Chief Secretary to the Treasury, recently told MPs that ‘taxes for the average worker have gone down by £1,000’ since 2010.

Questioned about her statement, she did not provide proof to back up her claim.

The House of Commons library has calculated that personal taxes will in fact have risen by about £1,200 between 2010 to 2024.

Labour has written to Ms Trott demanding she correct the Parliamentary record.

The letter by shadow Treasury minister James Murray says: ‘The tax burden in our country is set to increase by £4,300 per household between 2019/20 and 2028/29.

‘Even limiting ourselves to personal taxes, the tax burden is still projected to rise by £1,200 per household.’

It repeats the request for Ms Trott to give an ‘urgent clarification’ of her comments, and, if she cannot do so, to ‘correct the record’ in the Commons.

Last month Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced cuts to National Insurance, which will come in in January.

The Prime Minister told the Mail on Sunday the cuts are just the ‘start of a journey’, fuelling speculation that the Spring Budget will see cuts to income tax.

The Treasury responded by saying that Ms Trott was referring to increases to tax allowances since 2010.

Planning applications validated by EDDC for week beginning 20 November

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Raw sewage ‘cover-up’ at Windermere World Heritage Site

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Chris Packham challenges government for net zero policy delays

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New neighbourhood area for East Devon parish

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Thames Water told by auditors it could run out of money by April

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Conservative Minister is urged to correct the Commons record after saying people’s taxes are falling

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