Government must follow Cunliffe recommendations and then go further to fix failing water system

Published by Wildlife and Countryside Link (Link), the largest environment and wildlife coalition in England, bringing together 89 organisations to use their strong joint voice for the protection of nature.

wcl.org.uk

Environment groups are calling for bold urgent action from the Government in response to the National Water Commission’s interim report released today.

The public are rightly outraged by the state of England’s waterways. The Independent Water Commission has exposed failings in water company governance and financial controls, shortcomings in political planning and prioritisation, and a lack of cross-sector coordination and accountability for environmental management.

Charities are calling on the Government to start work now on vital reforms that will cut pollution and restore nature. They highlight that creating a new Regional System Planner – as recommended by Cunliffe – will take time. To ensure all sectors responsible for water pollution can play their part and be held to account, the Government should commit now to setting up this new body.

In other areas, the interim report stops short of final recommendations. However, it clearly recognises that water companies need stricter controls to ensure they work in the public interest and cannot profit at the expense of the environment. The Government must introduce new regulations with robust public interest tests and ensure civil society and environmental voices are properly heard in decision-making.

Some steps can and must be taken immediately, while others require a bold Water Act to deliver long-term, legally enforceable reform. The group make the following recommendations:

Richard Benwell, CEO of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said:

 “This interim report is a clear signpost, not a finishing line. The public are rightly angry about pollution and regulatory failure, and nature is in crisis. The Government must start work now to put in place a Regional Systems Planner with powers to align planning and spending decisions to restore river catchments.

“Even where the Commission has yet to make final recommendations, the findings of failings suggest a clear direction of travel. Politicians must stop equivocating and set clear strategic direction for environmental recovery. Strong, enforceable targets are needed for water quality that can be applied across sectors. Where in the past polluters have got away with profiteering, public interest tests must be built into every layer of operations and governance with consequences for failure.”

Quick wins:

Wildlife and Countryside Link is calling for the immediate implementation of several key proposals:

Mark Lloyd, CEO of The Rivers Trust, said: “Water is fundamental for nature’s recovery, for the growth of the economy, for the health and security of communities and for life itself. We will press the Commission over the next month to shoot for the stars rather than the moon in its final report. We will then expect to see the Government move swiftly and boldly to realise this high level of ambition.”

James Wallace, CEO of River Action, said:

 “We only have one chance to get it right. The public mandate for change is overwhelming and so is the urgency. What comes next must be decisive, enforceable, and in the public interest. We urge Sir Jon Cunliffe to give us more, much more. Nothing short of a systemic overhaul of how water companies are owned, funded, operated and regulated will do.”

Ali Morse, Water Policy Manager at The Wildlife Trusts said:

 “The Commission’s interim report emerges at a time when environmental protections are under threat from proposed planning laws, and budgets for nature look set to be slashed. This doesn’t look like the actions of a Government that is serious about restoring our chalk streams, or averting the extinction of water vole and Atlantic Salmon. To convince us otherwise, we need to see Government responding with measures that ensure water companies prioritise the health of rivers and seas, that past harms are made good, that other sectors too play their role, and that environmental regulators are equipped and supported to do their jobs. Only this will ensure that we have a healthy, thriving water environment that society and nature can both benefit from.”

Giles Bristow, CEO of Surfers Against Sewage, said:

“Ending the pollution crisis in our wild waters was an election issue acknowledged on the steps of Downing Street by the Prime Minister Keir Starmer. This report clearly identifies a broken privatised water system but stops short on systemic solutions to fix it. Until it is replumbed to prioritise the public health and the environment over profit for investors, an angry public will continue to swim and surf in a deluge of sewage that is destroying our rivers, lakes and coastal waters. We need tougher recommendations to government in the final report to help fix this system for good!”

Read more in our evidence to the Water Commission here: Blueprint for Water response – Independent Water Commission Call for Evidence.

Restoring public confidence is the key aim of the Cunliffe Review. ( Interim report published earlier this week.) 

In launching it the government recognized that a fundamental reset of the water sector was needed to address the systemic issues, and pave the way for a more sustainable and reliable water system.

But does it look like we are getting this fundamental reset?

Feargal Sharkey doesn’t think so:

Cunliffe report won’t make one atom of the UK’s water any cleaner

Feargal Sharkey www.thetimes.com 

Before the election, during the election and after the election, the government promised us a complete root-and-branch review, a wide-ranging re-examination and a complete reset for the water industry. We were promised champagne but today we’ve been offered sour milk.

I actually have some empathy for Sir Jon Cunliffe, bearing in mind the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is at the very epicentre of the utter shambles that is the modern water industry.

And yet it is the very government department that not only provides Cunliffe’s secretariat to his independent water commission but, more importantly, took that reset and turned it into an exercise of nothing more than shuffling furniture around, looking at regulation and investment.

He focuses on a whole bunch of things that are already within the gift of government to fix. For example, planning. London is running out of water and we haven’t built reservoirs in decades.

Well, as it turns out, [the former minister] Michael Gove almost fixed that problem seven years ago when he amended the planning legislation to make reservoirs part of the national infrastructure. So those decisions now go straight to the planning inspector.

When Cunliffe talks about priorities and ambition and the direction of travel from government and the regulators being confused, that needs statutory guidance. That is issued by government to Ofwat and the Environment Agency, setting out the government’s priorities. Steve Reed, the environment secretary, could fix all of that this afternoon by simply reissuing the guidance.

The idea of more regional planning is simply window dressing. This has been discussed for 35 years. There is nothing new.

I’m afraid in this case, Cunliffe has just been “Sir Humphrey-ed” — ie never establish a commission unless you already know the outcome.

None of this actually addresses the fundamental underlying issues within the industry. It’s a failed system of regulation.

I have said this to Cunliffe: none of what he’s talking about will actually make one atom of water, anywhere in this country, any cleaner. I was chatting to someone this morning who was in a car looking at Lake Windermere, which was turning green as we spoke.

I don’t think he’s taken on board anything anybody suggested. I have sympathy for him, however, because he’s been blatantly told by government to avoid the big issues. In Sir Jon’s words, and he is quoted as saying it, his job is to simply make the current system better. Well, when the current system is institutionally dysfunctional, institutionally discredited and institutionally incompetent, why bother?

When it comes to Cunliffe’s report, I had absolutely no expectations for it whatsoever. And he has not disappointed.

In terms of the big, ugly issue sitting at the middle of this, he’s been told not to get involved in it. That issue is a restructuring of the ownership of these companies.

There is nothing in Sir Jon Cunliffe’s report or the government’s current strategy that is going to stop Windermere from being poisoned, or save a single chalk stream in this country. We need to take a radical approach to this industry.