Construction is planned to begin in 2025. The scheme will involve improving a 400-metre length of existing rock armour along the foot of the cliffs at Seaton Hole beach, and repairing the existing Check House seawall.

Councillor Geoff Jung, EDDC’s portfolio holder for coast, country, and environment, said: “Like all other communities on the coast, Seaton is becoming more and more susceptible to coastal change due to our changing climate. More storms, higher rainfall, are clearly having a serious effect on our beaches and cliffs.”

“We are continually reviewing with other stakeholders such as the Environment Agency and the Town Council regarding the whole seafront. This section from Seaton Hole beach to the Check House is critical to protect a number of properties and we hope to start on this section next year.”

More than £500,000 in grant funding has been secured from the Environment Agency, with East Devon District Council (EDDC) allocating £250,000 towards the project. Additional funds from Devon County Council and Seaton Town Council have also been provided to support the scheme.

Local coastal defence specialists will be invited to tender for the works this spring, with the aim to start construction in summer 2025.

Posted by

East Devon Watch

Posted on

13 Mar 2024

Posted under

Misc

Come clean on secret taxpayer rescue plans for Thames Water, MP demands

Ministers must come clean on the secret details of an emergency plan for a taxpayer bailout in the event of Thames Water collapsing, a Liberal Democrat MP has said.

Those of us in the regions could end up paying twice for water, once for ours, and again for London”s water. Is this levelling up? – Owl

Sandra Laville www.theguardian.com

Sarah Olney will press in parliament this week for details of a behind-the-scenes rescue operation being drawn up for the biggest privatised water company in England. Olney said keeping the details of the contingency plan secret amounted to a cover-up.

The MP has secured a parliamentary debate this Friday, as intensive discussions are under way between ministers and the regulator Ofwat on the emergency rescue plan in case of the collapse of the ailing privatised water company, which provides water and waste services to 15 million people.

Olney wants details of the contingency plans, which are codenamed Operation Timber and being run by Tamara Finkelstein, the permanent secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to be made public.

“This Conservative government’s refusal to make their contingency plan in the event of Thames Water’s collapse, public, is nothing short of a cover-up,” Olney said. “It is very clear they could easily slip into special administration. The public has a right to know what ministers plan to do.”

Thames Water, which has debts of more than £18bn, is trying to stay solvent and avoid a takeover by seeking an additional £2.5bn bailout from its shareholders for the second half of the decade.

But the company wants concessions from Ofwat to encourage shareholders to commit to the bailout. These include being allowed to pay higher dividends, while increasing bills by 40%, and limitations on fines for serious pollution of rivers.

In a sign its collapse could be looming, ministers recently updated 30-year-old water insolvency legislation, which can be triggered if a water company cannot pay its debts.

Emma Hardy, the Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull and Hessle, said the move reflected “the desperate and perilous situation that the sector had reached, with many companies on the precipice”.

The upgraded insolvency legislation is aimed at ensuring that drinking water and wastewater services for 15 million people are maintained if Thames became insolvent.

Special administrators can be appointed to a water company by the secretary of state or the regulator.

The company, along with five other water firms, is at the centre of an Ofwat investigation into the potentially illegal discharging of sewage from its treatment plants.

Water companies on Tuesday announced details of plans to remove 150,000 annual sewage spills by 2030, making nearly 9,000 storm overflow improvements in a £10bn investment over five years. They are seeking Ofwat approval to raise customer bills to pay for this.

Olney said: “For too long water companies have been allowed to get away with pumping raw sewage into our waterways while Conservative ministers have turned a blind eye. It is time they cracked down on these polluting giants and put an end to this disgusting practice.”

The MP said it was important for the government to be open about any discussions of a taxpayer bailout for Thames at a time when the water industry was under scrutiny. Companies including South East water, Southern Water and SES water are, like Thames Water, listed in Ofwat’s most recent highest category regarding concerns over their financial resilience and ability to operate.

The industry is opposed to putting Thames into special administration, fearing it will affect other struggling water companies by reducing investor confidence.

Olney said it was vital to exert public scrutiny over the emergency plans for Thames and taxpayer liabilities because of the potential for other companies to go under.

A government spokesperson said: “Water companies are commercial entities and we do not comment on the financial situation of specific companies as it would not be appropriate. We prepare for a range of scenarios across our regulated industries – including water – as any responsible government would.”

Thames Water declined to comment.

Posted by

East Devon Watch

Posted on

13 Mar 2024

Posted under

Misc

Water firms map out plan to cut 150k spills

Water companies have claimed they will cut sewage spills by 150,000 a year by the end of the decade, as they laid out a plan for tackling river pollution.

An online map published today shows where improvements will be made to curb spills in waterways, down to the level of individual storm overflow pipes. It will include new storm tanks to stop sewers being overwhelmed. [From the Times]

However, the map accompanying the National Storm Overflow Plan for England, ordered by the government, reveals that roughly 5,000 of about 14,000 overflows will not receive improvements by 2050. Water sector figures fear that risks a backlash from the public in areas that will miss out.

It also appears to fall short of a demand by the former environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, 13 months ago who said all water companies must deliver “a clear plan for what they are doing on every storm overflow”.

[Owl -The interactive map is complicated and won’t win any prizes for using “plain English” but it does contain a lot of information. Here, by way of illustration are three screen shots. The first gives an overview of East Devon including the catchment areas of the Exe, Otter and Axe. This shows that the spills into our rivers will be the last to be cleaned up.

The second zooms in on our coast.

The third illustrates the history and projection of spills available for each outlet, in this case the Imperial Road CSO in Exmouth. From a baseline of 14 spills a year now, SWW estimate they won’t even halve that number by 2050! So you really need to read the “small print”.]

Update: see more details in this second post.

Back to the Times article…..

Adam Vaughan Environment Editor, The Times print edition 12 March.

The plan comes at a sensitive time for the water industry. Companies are braced for official figures this month that are expected to show a huge increase in sewage spills. That is because last year was wetter than normal, 2022 was drier than usual and the number of pipes being monitored rose to 100 per cent by last December.

The industry body Water UK said that it expected its new plan to cut 150,000 sewage spills by 2030, a 40 per cent reduction compared with the 372,000 that were recorded in 2020. The government’s plan had envisaged a cut of 64,000 sewage spills by 2030.

New infrastructure, which can vary from storm tanks to wetlands and “sustainable urban drainage systems” to slow the flow of rainwater into sewers, will be focused first on bathing waters and ecologically important waters including sites of special scientific interest. Great Britain’s longest river, the Severn, is set to have a 77 percent reduction in sewage spills.

Water companies are expected to spend in the region of £60 billion between now and 2050 to end the scourge of raw sewage being dumped when it rains, due to the way rainwater and sewage are collected in the same pipes.

The investment between 2025 and 2030 is expected to push up the average house-

hold water bill by about £13 a year. However, the amount will vary widely around the country. United Utilities, which covers northwest England, is expected to account for £3.1 billion of the water sector’s £10.2 billion slated for cutting spills between 2025 and 2030. On the flipside, it is expected to have the biggest reduction in spills, with the new map suggesting about 58,000 fewer spills by 2030. The Times Clean it Up campaign has

been urging regulators and politicians to sign off on new investment plans totalling £96 billion by 2030, with tariffs to protect the most vulnerable in society. A decision is expected by Ofwat this summer.

Water UK said the government could deliver on ten of its past commitments to help speed up the elimination of sewage spills. The list of ideas includes a 14-month-old promise to mandate ponds and other green drainage systems in new-build housing developments in England, and banning the sale of plastic wet wipes. The government said it was committed to banning wet wipes.

“The ban on wet wipes has now been announced in 2018, 2021 and then last April and yet they are still being sold by the millions, and are still clogging up our sewage system and polluting our rivers with microplastics,” Charles Watson, chairman of the campaign group River Action, said.

The water minister Robbie Moore said: “As part of our drive to improve transparency, we demanded these storm overflow action plans were created by industry and we will now closely scrutinise them to ensure significant action is taken to reduce harmful and unnecessary discharges.”

Posted by

East Devon Watch

Posted on

13 Mar 2024

Posted under

Misc

Simon Jupp’s so short of political ideas he’s stealing Richard Foord’s clothes again!

[And did Alison Hernandez get a ticking off?]

Once again Simon Jupp is claiming conservative credit for the “triple lock” in his latest facebook “Weekly roundup”.

As Owl explained in the middle of January, from a speech given by Richard Foord in parliament:

The Conservative 2010 manifesto talked about restoring the link between the basic state pension and average earnings”,

Whereas it was the 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto that stated:

“We will uprate the state pension annually by whichever is the higher of growth in earnings, growth in prices or 2.5 per cent.”

In the same “Weekly roundup” Simon said:

“It was great to welcome Home Secretary James Cleverly to Sidmouth last weekend to talk to residents with Police & Crime Commissioner, Alison Hernandez. We have record police officer numbers in Devon & Cornwall & Honiton’s police station has recently reopened to the public, with more to come.“

But Simon again forgot to mention that:

Honiton is in Richard Foord’s constituency – those of us actually living in “Juppland”, for example Sidmouth and Exmouth have yet to see a police office reopen, and in Budleigh even see a police officer, except on training days!

A year ago Owl reported that about a third of the new “Bozzer” recruits (Boris Johnson’s promise to add 20,000 to the force) Alison Hernandez boasted about getting in 2019 (and we are paying for) had voted with their feet and had left. We are also paying through the nose for these recruits as Hernandez bangs up her take of the Council Tax once again by a “necessary” 4.95 per cent. Since coming into office in 2016 she has pushed her take of the average council tax by over £100. Remember she spends 70% more of your Council Tax as EDDC does. (Council Tax is split: 73% DCC; 12% Police; 7% EDDC; 4% Fire; 4% Towns & Parishes).

Finally, did the Home Secretary take her aside for a little chat about her force not only being in “special measures” but rated poorly for failings in “Strategic Planning” and “Value for Money”? From the photos, perhaps he did.

Owl is wondering whether to start a “ministerial visit ” count as an indicator of how insecure the party feels the East Devon parliamentary seats are?

They are also kept pretty “hush hush” for some reason.

Planning applications validated by EDDC for the week beginning 26 February

Share this:

Plans to upgrade coastal defences at Seaton one step closer

Share this:

Come clean on secret taxpayer rescue plans for Thames Water, MP demands

Share this:

Water firms map out plan to cut 150k spills

Share this:

Simon Jupp’s so short of political ideas he’s stealing Richard Foord’s clothes again!

Share this: