LONDON, Jan 19 (Reuters) – Britain will outline plans to improve England’s water sector on Tuesday, promising a new regulator \u200bwith powers to make more checks on infrastructure and \u200ctry to prevent sewage spills and supply outages.<\/p>\n
The government has said the privatised \u200cwater sector is broken, after levels of sewage pollution rose following years of under-investment, while the country’s biggest supplier, Thames Water, battles to survive after being loaded up with debt.<\/p>\n
In the most recent \u2060setback, two incidents over \u200cthe last six weeks have left tens of thousands of households in south east England without water \u200dfor days.<\/p>\n
The creation of a new regulator, which would combine several existing authorities, was first suggested last July, and environment minister Emma Reynolds said \u200bthe government’s plans for new legislation would help ensure better \u200cperformance by water companies.<\/p>\n
“Water companies will have nowhere to hide from poor performance, customers will get the service they deserve, and investors will see a system built for the future,” she said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Thames Water, which is in the process of trying \u2060to secure regulatory backing for a \u200brescue plan led by some of \u200bits lenders, has complained that the heavy fines it faces prevent it from investing to improve its performance.<\/p>\n
The \u200dgovernment said its \u2060plan was for a ‘Performance Improvement Regime’ to help “underperforming water companies recover faster”. It did not provide further details.<\/p>\n
The new regulator \u2060would also carry out “health checks” on water companies’ pipes, pumps and infrastructure, \u200cwith the ability to show up without notice.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sarah \u200cYoung, Editing by Paul Sandle)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, Jan 19 (Reuters) – Britain will outline plans to improve England’s water sector on Tuesday, promising a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,212307,393,4884,1144,18818,712,212306,28889,22580,16,15,1764,212305],"class_list":{"0":"post-707330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-emma-reynolds","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-regulator","15":"tag-scotland","16":"tag-sewage-spills","17":"tag-thames-water","18":"tag-the-government","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-wales","22":"tag-water-sector"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115924229400108058","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707330","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=707330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}