{"id":277807,"date":"2025-07-20T16:37:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T16:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/277807\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T16:37:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T16:37:10","slug":"environment-secretary-furious-about-england-and-wales-water-bills-water-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/277807\/","title":{"rendered":"Environment secretary \u2018furious\u2019 about England and Wales water bills | Water industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

The environment secretary, Steve Reed, has said he is \u201cfurious\u201d about an average 36% rise in water bills<\/a> in England and Wales but was unable to rule out further above-inflation increases in future to fix the broken water sector.<\/p>\n

Reed said he hoped that \u201croot and branch\u201d reform of the industry would lead to billions of pounds more in investment, which would mean companies would \u201cnever again\u201d have to increase bills in the way they did last year.<\/p>\n

The average bill will rise by 36% over five years and some will see a price rise of more than 50%. Six water companies have said this is not sufficient to meet the regulator Ofwat\u2019s target and have complained to the Competition and Markets Authority to seek further bill increases.<\/p>\n

However, asked by the BBC\u2019s Laura Kuenssberg whether he would allow water companies to increase bills even further, as many have already requested, he said the decision would be up to regulators.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2018m furious about the bill rises that we saw last year,\u201d he said. \u201cThey happened because of 14 years of failure under the previous government. They could have intervened and made sure that that investment to fix the broken sewage pipes was going in. They didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe point is you can learn from the past to improve the future. If you see a crack in the wall of your home and you leave it for 10 years, it gets much more expensive to fix. That\u2019s what happened with our water pipes. Bill payers were made to pay the price of failure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m furious about that. By changing the whole system, root and branch reform, I can make sure enough money is going in every year that we will never again see that kind of massive bill hike that customers had to pay last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ministers will this week announce a consultation into creating a new water regulator, with a government-commissioned review expected to confirm on Monday that Ofwat, the watchdog that polices how much water companies can charge for services, will be abolished<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Critics say Ofwat has presided over a culture of underinvestment in water infrastructure and financial mismanagement by water companies since its creation in 1989. Thames Water, the most troubling case for the government and the UK\u2019s largest water company, is loaded with \u00a320bn in debt and struggling to stave off financial collapse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reed also told Sky News\u2019s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips programme that households expected \u201ca small, steady increase\u201d in water bills rather than massive hikes. \u201cBills need to be as low as possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

There needed to be \u201cappropriate bill rises\u201d to secure \u201cappropriate levels of investment\u201d, he said, adding: \u201cA small, steady increase in bills is what people expect. That\u2019s what happens in most bills that I pay this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Industry leaders have long complained about a lack of coherence in water regulation, with different regulators and agencies doubling up on areas of investigation. This has made it hard to have timely decisions, allowing investigations to drag on rather than prevent or address environmental harm and pollution.<\/p>\n

Reed said it was \u201coutrageous\u201d that Southern Water\u2019s chief executive, Lawrence Gosden, was given a pay rise that almost doubled his income<\/a>, adding that he should have turned it down.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrust between the customers and the water companies is at the lowest point probably ever, and by paying their senior executives rises of that kind, what message are they sending to their customers?\u201d he added. \u201cI really would urge them to think about this very, very, very carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he would resign as environment secretary if the government failed to halve sewage pollution in rivers by 2030. \u201cPoliticians come and say we\u2019re going to do things. Of course our job should be on the line if we don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reed has come under fire from sewage campaigners for announcing targets which they say are no better than those in Ofwat\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n

During the price review process, which is the negotiation by the regulator and the water companies about how much bills need to go up to invest in the water sector, Ofwat last year announced the investment from bills would cut sewage spills by 45% from 2021 levels.<\/p>\n

Reed announcend that he would cut sewage spills by 50% by 2030 against 2024 levels. However, Ofwat\u2019s goal would reduce sewage spills to 204,893 by 2030, compared to Reed\u2019s which would reduce them to 225,199 by that year.<\/p>\n

Defra sources said Reed\u2019s target could be stronger than Ofwat\u2019s because for 2021 storm overflows baseline only 87.8% of overflows were monitored. The 2024 baseline includes 100% monitoring. However, the two figures are largely similar.<\/p>\n

The price review process began in 2023, when plans were submitted under the previous Tory government. The \u00a3104bn to be invested in fixing England\u2019s creaking sewage infrastructure is coming from a record increase in water bills.<\/p>\n

Feargal Sharkey, former Undertones frontman turned sewage campaigner said the targets unveiled on Sunday are actually worse than those Ofwat announced during the price review process.<\/p>\n

He told the Guardian: \u201cIt\u2019s an act worthy of a Greek tragedy telling your regulator that you\u2019ve come up with a plan that turns out to be worse than the one they come up with a year and a half ago. The government has decided to axe Ofwat while announcing targets which are worse than theirs. Their plan is not worth the paper it\u2019s written on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The environment secretary, Steve Reed, has said he is \u201cfurious\u201d about an average 36% rise in water bills…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5010],"tags":[748,4884,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-277807","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wales","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114886545762844224","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}