Water companies are forecasting an above-inflation rise in average household bills in April, drawing criticism from campaigners.

Kevin Peachey – Cost of living correspondent BBC

The average annual water and sewerage bill is expected to rise by 6% in England and Wales, up £27 to £473, says suppliers’ trade body Water UK.

In Scotland, water and waste charges will go up by 8.8%, a rise of £36.

Water firms have been facing intense scrutiny after the dumping of sewage into rivers.

“Next year will see record levels of investment from water companies to secure the security of our water supply in the future and significantly reduce the amount of sewage in rivers and seas,” said David Henderson, chief executive of Water UK.

He said companies in England and Wales would invest more than £14.4bn in the next financial year, the highest annual investment on record.

Bills can vary

The average expected bill is calculated by companies, and will be above the latest inflation rate of 4%, which charts general price rises. Actual individual bills can differ significantly owing to regional variations and usage levels for those on a meter.

In England and Wales, Wessex Water and Anglian Water are at the top end of the scale, with average bills set to increase to £548 and £529 respectively, while Northumbrian customers will see the lowest average bills of £422.

A host of companies were told by regulator Ofwat last year that they would have to limit rises owing to missing key targets on leakages, supply and reducing pollution.

The watchdog has also told suppliers that they must offer help to those who were struggling with bills.

“We are very aware, for those who are already struggling, this will be a real worry. As such, water companies must do all they can to protect those who are most in need of a helping hand,” said chief executive David Black.

More than a million households in England and Wales get cheaper bills through companies’ social tariff schemes, saving them an average of £151 last year. Around half of households in Scotland receive financial support with water charges.

Five water companies use some of their own profits to help fund social tariffs, with consumer groups are calling for others to join them.

Mike Keil, chief executive of the Consumer Council for Water (CCW), said: “Almost a fifth of households say they struggle to pay their water bill and these rises will heap even greater pressure on low-income customers.

“If water companies are serious about rebuilding trust in the sector they should use some of their profits to help people who cannot afford another bill rise.”

Separately, Ofwat is considering proposals by water companies in England and Wales to increase bills by £156 a year by 2030 to pay for upgrades and reduce sewage discharges.

The increase would allow infrastructure spending to almost double to £96bn, Water UK said.

However, there has been public anger at the amount of sewage being discharged into rivers and seas and continued cost of living pressures.

There is also an ongoing consultation into water charges in Northern Ireland.

“While they schmooze over how to spin bad news as good, we the public are wading through the poisonous effluent of their combined malpractice and ineptitude.”  – James Wallace, the CEO of River Action UK

Water company bosses and the chairs of the regulator Ofwat and the Environment Agency went for dinner at an exclusive private members’ club to discuss how to quell public anger over bill rises and sewage spills, the Guardian can reveal.

Helena Horton www.theguardian.com

Campaigners have said the private meeting is an outrageous example of “regulatory capture” as Ofwat and the Environment Agency are supposed to hold water companies to account, rather than help with their public relations.

Iain Coucher, the chair of Ofwat, and Alan Lovell, who chairs the Environment Agency, met for dinner with Gill Rider, the chair of South West Water, Christine Hodgson, who runs Severn Trent, and Keith Lough, the chair of Southern Water. Heidi Mottram, the CEO of Northumbrian Water, was also invited but did not, it is understood, attend.

Emails between those who attended, revealed to the Guardian under freedom of information laws, indicate that the dinner was the third held in 2023 as part of continuing discussions about how to handle communications around sewage spills and bill rises. These issues have attracted huge public outcry because of the environmental destruction caused by the dumping of human waste in English waterways.

On this particular occasion, referred to as the “chair’s dinner” in the emails, the water bosses and government representatives met on the 25 September to eat in the opulent Segrave room, a private dining room in the Royal Automobile Club (RAC), Pall Mall. The menus for the restaurants at the RAC offer venison and wild mushroom pie for £26.75, a tasting menu at £90 a head, or a fish pie for £19.

The exclusive club is called “the palace in Pall Mall” and says on its website that it “boasts a dining experience for every occasion”, as well as 108 bedrooms, a business centre, a marble swimming pool and Turkish baths, four squash courts, a gym and treatment rooms. Annual membership of the club costs £2,230. It’s a favourite club of the royals, and is currently chaired by Prince Michael of Kent. The RAC is a haunt of businessmen, counting many millionaires among its members.

In the gilded dining room, the group were greeted with drinks at 6.30pm, and were served dinner at 7pm. The FoI emails reveal that the Ofwat and Environment Agency chiefs discussed topics including “navigating the coming months, particularly to manage perceptions”.

They discussed how to shape the conversation around bill rises when these are announced to the public, with emails revealing they asked: “Given the debate on bills/affordability how do we carefully message the increases?” and “How do we describe the ambition of the plans (national infrastructure improvements, storm overflow management etc), balancing between addressing heightened scrutiny and affordable and deliverable outcomes?”

The water quality campaigner and former Undertones frontman Feargal Sharkey said the private dinner was outrageous and an example of “regulatory capture”. He said: “In my view here we have a clear case of regulatory capture – industry and regulators, both of which are currently under enormous amounts of public scrutiny and criticism, acting in tandem trying to avoid anything remotely looking like transparency and/or accountability. This is pretty damned outrageous.” He also called for the chairs to resign.

James Wallace, the CEO of River Action UK, added: “It is outrageous that the government is holding private meetings – using taxpayers’ money – with water industry bosses on how to greenwash their dreadful performance on river and coastal pollution. One minute they threaten prosecution, the next they guzzle Château Margaux.

“While they schmooze over how to spin bad news as good, we the public are wading through the poisonous effluent of their combined malpractice and ineptitude.”

The 11 water suppliers in England and Wales will in the coming days publish their new household charges, which will take effect from April. In early February, the industry body Water UK will then announce how much bills have increased on average. Last year they went up by £31 to £448. The likely announcement of a price hike will anger the public after years of sewage dumping, high executive pay, debt levels and big dividends.

It is possible that this was discussed further at another recent dinner: an email from Lovell to the attenders confirms another meal to be held in January 2024, weeks before the bill hikes were to be announced.

He said the September 2023 dinner was a “productive discussion between attendees”, adding that he looked forward to the next. He also asked the water companies to release storm overflow – sewage pollution – data early, on 1 January 2024. They did not do this.

Another hot topic on the agenda at the dinner were the “events at Thames Water”. The beleaguered company has faced financial woes and auditors have warned that without a cash injection it could go under by April. Last year, it emerged that contingency plans for its collapse 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. Other water companies are thought to be facing similar, though less severe, financial pressures.

Severn Trent, Northumbrian Water, Southern Water and South West Water declined to comment on the record.

An Ofwat spokesperson said: “Ofwat remains focused on holding water companies to account on behalf of customers and has imposed fines and performance penalties worth £250m in the past few years. At this meeting we made clear to the chairs of water companies our dissatisfaction on progress in reducing pollution, the use of storm overflows, and concerns about the impact of proposed bill rises on customers, especially the most vulnerable.”

An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “It is not unusual for the Environment Agency chair to meet his counterparts at water companies. These are working meetings used to challenge companies on their performance and drive forward improvements that we, as a regulator, expect to see. To suggest otherwise would be highly inaccurate.

“At the September 2023 meeting, the EA chair made clear his disappointment with water company performance; reiterated the need for rapid investment and the sharing of good practice, and outlined actions he would be taking forward at the Environment Agency, including continued rigorous enforcement.

“We are continuing to robustly hold water companies to account, with strengthened regulation and £150m in fines secured through prosecutions since 2015.”

What kind of impact does it have on local democracy? “We don’t know what we don’t know,” says Rasmus Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. “We can’t say for sure it is having a corrosive effect, but there is every reason to be deeply concerned.”

Alexandra Topping www.theguardian.com

This week a damning review found that one of the highest-profile government-backed regeneration schemes in Britain, Teesworks in the north-east, had “a culture of excessive confidentiality” that meant it was hard to tell if it was providing value for money.

That anyone has heard about it at all is in large part down to the dogged reporting of Private Eye’s Richard Brooks, who published his first story about it in March 2022. But it should have been looked at – by a local newspaper – earlier than that, he reckons. “Local journalists should have been scrutinising the mayoral authority and development corporation years before,” he says. “But they don’t have the resources, and that turns into a lack of ability – and will – to scrutinise.”

As the Guardian Councils in Crisis project shows, there is no shortage of stories to be rooted out in the workings of local authorities – but there is a dearth of people to write them. According to the Charitable Journalism Project, there are probably fewer local newspapers in Britain now than at any time since the 18th century, and the number continues to decline: more than 320 local titles closed between 2009 and 2019 as advertising revenues fell by about 70%.

In the last 12 months alone, Reach, publisher of the Liverpool Echo and the Manchester Evening News as well as the Mirror and Express titles, has slashed 800 roles in several bruising rounds of cuts. Local newspaper barons are largely extinct, with much local news local in name only – an amalgamation of copy from news agencies, repurposed content from sister titles, press releases and letters.

What kind of impact does it have on local democracy? “We don’t know what we don’t know,” says Rasmus Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. “We can’t say for sure it is having a corrosive effect, but there is every reason to be deeply concerned.”

Bob Neill MP, chair of the justice select committee, says he worries about the decline in local court reports too. “It’s all part of the same story,” he says. “Fixing it will be very difficult, but at least we have to start having a discussion.”

It’s not just the number of local journalists that has fallen off a cliff: the number of people actually caring about local news, at least as printed by traditional publications, has dropped too. In 2015, 22% of UK adults said they had got news from a local or regional newspaper in the past week; by 2023, the figure had dropped to 12%, according to the Reuters Institute’s annual digital news report survey. In 2020 it also asked those that do read local news if they’d miss it if it went out of business: only a quarter said they would “miss it a lot”.

But people who do follow local news are more likely to participate in political processes and engage in their local community, says Nielsen. It also helps keep local officials honest. “It reduces the risk of mismanagement and increases the chance that local officials vote in line with what their constituents want,” he says.

So, is there anything that can be done to halt the decline? There are small shoots of regrowth with the rise of small independent media like Mill Media and the Bristol Cable; the BBC funds journalists at other regional organisations through the local democracy reporting service.

Last year a cross-party group of MPs recommended that the government should set up an innovation fund, look at ways to make it easier for local news organisations to become charities and encourage more philanthropic funding of local news. They could go further: in Nordic countries, news outlets can apply for direct subsidies from the state.

But at the moment, nothing is being done on a governmental level – itself a political choice. With others unlikely to step into the breach, local news must be its own saviour, says Nielsen, as hard as it is for embattled local news providers to hear. “The harsh fact is news organisations are the ones with the clear and urgent interest in turning this around,” he says. For local democracy’s sake, everyone else must hope that they do.

“[The] design is undistinguished, off-the-peg, alien, like an urban institution with large side walls without windows… all out of keeping with the town and immediate area and failing to reflect the town’s vernacular.

“This prime historic parkland site needs something much, much better than this poorly designed and very damaging overdevelopment.” Objector Mike Temple

“..I thought it perhaps had been the same architect that designed the Bibby Stockholm because it looks about as interesting as that.” EDDC Cllr Ian Barlow.

Will Goddard www.devonlive.com

East Devon District Council’s former headquarters at Knowle in Sidmouth can’t be knocked down to make way for a care and retirement development. The old offices, which were also once a hotel, were severely damaged by fire in a suspected case of arson last March.

Retirement homes specialist McCarthy and Stone wanted to build a 70-bed care home, 53 assisted living apartments for the over-70s and 33 apartments for the over-60s on the site, as well as four semi-detached homes and a terrace of three townhouses which would not have been age-restricted.

A former caretaker’s building would also have been kept, and another purpose-built structure erected for bats.

But now planning permission has been turned down, with one councillor suggesting the plans reminded him of a prison.

The decision followed strong opposition by members of the public at an East Devon District Council (EDDC) meeting this week.

Objector Michael Temple said: “[The] design is undistinguished, off-the-peg, alien, like an urban institution with large side walls without windows… all out of keeping with the town and immediate area and failing to reflect the town’s vernacular.

“This prime historic parkland site needs something much, much better than this poorly designed and very damaging overdevelopment.”

Sidmouth Town Council supported the non-age-restricted houses, but not the care and retirement parts of the proposed development.

Its chair Cllr Chris Lockyear said: “We were opposed to the very large care home and retirement apartments. They are simply too big for that site. They are out of keeping with the area and architecturally very different.

“They will dominate the surrounding parkland and the surrounding houses. They will be visible from Peak Hill and from Salcombe Hill and therefore will change the appearance of Sidmouth both locally and from afar.”

But a spokesman for the developer addressed the potential benefits of the redevelopment. He said: “The council can’t demonstrate a five-year supply of housing and this obviously helps and contributes towards that overall provision.

“In addition, this is a job creation. There are jobs being provided in the care home and the extra care as well as retirement element.

The Knowle ablaze in March 2023 (Image: Copyright unknown)

“That type of accommodation, the mix of accommodation, you’ve got a variety there in terms of care, extra care, open-market housing, there is a balanced community there.

“Commonly, residents will have family, friends, or will be living within the local community. And this does provide them that opportunity to remain part of that. It enables the downsizing of properties.

“So people, worker residents, will be moving in there. Yes, there may be some from outside, but predominantly it will be from within the local area.”

EDDC planning officers had recommended councillors approve the plans, warning it could be difficult to defend an appeal.

A previous application for assisted living properties at the Knowle was allowed at appeal.

Councillors nevertheless voted to refuse the application on the grounds the design and shape of the two most southerly blocks would not have been acceptable and would have failed to recognise local distinctiveness. They said the scheme would lead to ‘overlooking’, been too overbearing and would have had an adverse impact on the local landscape.

Cllr Ian Barlow (Independent, Sidmouth Town), describing the proposed development as “monolithic”, said: “When I first saw [the design] I thought it perhaps had been the same architect that designed the Bibby Stockholm because it looks about as interesting as that.

“Do we not like our old people? Do we want them to live in what can be best described as a prison block?”