Cleaning Britain’s polluted rivers will cost ‘eye-watering’ £51bn, Government says
Cleaning Britain’s polluted rivers will cost ‘eye-watering’ £51bn, Government says
Posted by theipaper
Cleaning Britain’s polluted rivers will cost ‘eye-watering’ £51bn, Government says
Cleaning Britain’s polluted rivers will cost ‘eye-watering’ £51bn, Government says
Posted by theipaper
36 comments
Ensuring England’s rivers meet legal environmental standards would cost an “eye-watering” £51bn, lawyers representing the Government have argued.
A landmark legal battle between Environment Secretary, Steve Reed, and a group of anglers fighting to clean up a river in North Yorkshire went before the Court of Appeal on Tuesday.
The Pickering Fishery Association [won a High Court case against the Government in November 2023](https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/new-environment-secretary-river-plans-2768120?ico=in-line_link) after a judge found ministers’ plans to clean up rivers in the region were too vague.
At the time, lawyers representing the anglers said the judgement could force the Environment Agency (EA) to rewrite its plans to improve thousands of rivers across the country.
The previous Conservative government challenged the decision, claiming that drawing up plans to clean up individual rivers and streams would be unworkable. Reed chose to proceed with the appeal upon coming into post with the new Labour government last July.
The case concerns the Water Framework Directive, a set of regulations derived from the EU but adopted under British law, which sets a target that all waterbodies achieve a “good or potential for good” ecological status by 2027.
Only 15 per cent of rivers in England currently achieve this standard and the Government’s own watchdog has said the 2027 target will most likely be missed.
To achieve this target, the Government is required to publish River Basin Management Plans every six years setting out how the waterbodies within the basin will be improved.
In 2023 the Pickering Fishery Association successfully argued that the plan for the Humber region was unlawful as it was “generic” and did not include any specific information about improving water quality in the Costa Beck, a former trout stream near Pickering.
and yet, likely if we dont do it that bill will increase and the ecological impact of the polution will worsen
i dont care the cost when its clearly a situation where innaction rises the cost.
and this isnt even considering the alleged “£64bn” in benefits this would bring
Go tell the investors and water companies. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for it.
No point cleaning anything unless you fix the sweage works first. You’d just end up having to clean it again a couple of years later
The whole thing was anti-Tory propaganda from the start. It turns out we don’t have infinite money to solve every single problem in society, like the leftists frewuently implied when they were in opposition. Who in their right mind would take tens of billions away from the NHS, killing thousands of humans, in order to protect some fish?
And the water company profits last year were?……
Well obviously The only solution the government gave Is to further reduce the regulations of the water companies and trust that this time they might take some of the billion quid bailout and actually use it on the service
My toilet cost £51bn too clean too when I pay contractors £51bn
This is all their marketing departments to try to instill language like “overflow” and “fix”. They made business decisions that led to this, it didn’t accidentally happen. It costs money to treat and it doesn’t to dump it. They spent money to convince the government to not even force them to record the dumping incidences outside of summer so this is absolutely not about doing the right thing and hasn’t been for years. These companies will not do the right thing until they’re forced to
And the water companies should pay every penny. They’ve taken our money done nothing with it but pay bonuses and shareholders. Time to realise you can also make a loss and not put it on the bill payers
Do we not pay our water companies to also keep the waters clean?
tax the rich and corporations
So?
We need clean water.
We don’t need all the other shit money is spent on…
This is what happens when greedy private companies aren’t held accountable.
You cannot privatise the profits and socialise the losses. Fuck the water companies. And fuck labcons!
Why was it allowed to get to the point that it will cost this much to put right?
Until we start having consequences and in cases like this I mean accountability and prison sentences do we really expect anything to change?
I think the majority do not care how much this would cost, clean water is ALWAYS a good thing, it needs to be done. Maybe there needs to be a look into with how it got this way in the first place and some big fat fines??
WHY SHOULD IT COST US, WE SPENT BILLIONS (tax payers) IN THE LATE 80’s & 90’s CLEANING UP OUR RIVERS AND BEACHES FOR YOU CUNTS TO POLLUTE IT AGAIN THEN ASK US TO CLEAR IT UP AGAIN. FUCK OFF.
Looks like we’ll have to freeze dividends and bonuses at the water companies then for the next 25 years.
These stories and minister claims are made to look like the problem is too big to ever resolve, but the truth is that is less than the money taken out in dividends alone by private companies since we privatised the water network (£57bn) and when adjust for inflation, that figure is almost £70bn by todays terms.
The money is there to fix it, let’s just see who the government comes looking for to pay for it a – the public or the private equity firms who caused this mess.
Let the water companies go bust and buy them back for £1.
How does anyone even come up with these numbers? Let me guess, people linked to the contractors and companies who would carry out the work.
Better crack on then because they way these things work, it will be £100bn next year.
How about the companies stated the amount they intend to pay in bonuses and dividends at the start if the year and all fines for poor quality water and for spills come out of that money first.
If that pot runs dry then board members start losing jobs.
Might focus their minds a bit more.
Get Elon to pay for it since he’s so interesting in the well being of the UKs citizens
Bollocks. No it won’t. Who came up with that amount?
Cost should be split between government and those making the pollution, you know if the water companies had serious fines they’d find a way to clean and prevent pollution going into the rivers
Surely Rachel Reeves can easily find this without penalising the taxpayer. Oh hang on – wait
Strip those companies of their worth and take them as payment for this so they get nothing. Nationalise it. If this is the cost then they should get absolutely nothing for ruining our fucking natural resource.
Surely the water companies should be paying this – this is clearly their liability, this is pollution they’ve caused. If they were a normal business they’d be liable for clean up costs.
We certainly should t be paying it should be down to water companies.
If only there were several companies who could be held accountable to pay for it…
Overhow many years? Over 10 years, taking dividend profits from the water companies that’s not too outrageous.
I remember how I was roundly dismissed and laughed at for pointing out this would happen during Brexit. I was met with intransigent insistence from credulous morons that the fact that they were scrapping EU environmental protections and replacing them with nothing *totally* didn’t mean our waterways would be polluted to shit within a couple of years, trust us bro. British democracy is senile, and will absolutely vote for self-harm for the momentary ego boost of feeling cleverer than the people who actually know what they’re talking about.
Well, the Brexity toxic positivity cult got what they wanted. Now take a nice deep whiff of that sovereignty you wanted so much, and then no doubt try to tell me some ego-protecting lie about how it doesn’t reek of raw sewage.
do it then.
Is it just me – or does that seem like lot not alot of money?
51 Billion, 25 Million Households in the UK – 2,000/Household…invest over 10 years
200 pounds a year on Bills…or less than 20 quid a month.
Hardly seems enough for a massive infrastructure upgrade.
Lol, it’ll cost about 1 billion to clean them, and 50 billion for all the ‘special advisors’ to sit and drink coffee and chat for 7 years before doing it.
Put a cap on the price of water and make the water companies foot the bill through a fine.
That way, they are forced to pay for it and cannot adjust their pricing to a degree where it is paid for by the consumer.
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