Peterborough water provider Anglian Water must pay over £62million for wastewater failures
Anglian Water will have to pay out £62.8million for breaching their legal obligations in operating their wastewater treatment works and networks.
The Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat) found that the company had operated and maintained their sewage works and networks in a way that resulted in ‘excessive spills from storm overflows."
These breaches have been described as ‘serious’ and ‘unacceptable.’
The investigation found that Anglian Water had failed to operate, maintain and upgrade their wastewater assets adequately to ensure they could cope with the flows of sewage and wastewater coming to them. The company failed to have in place adequate processes and oversight by their senior management and board to ensure assets were performing adequately and that they were meeting the legal requirements expected of them.
Anglian Water has acknowledged its failures and has avoided a direct fine and will instead use the money to fund an ‘enforcement package.’
The £62.8m package includes:
£5.8m to create an entirely new Community Fund
The Community Fund will be ringfenced for environmental and social causes within the Anglian region. Local communities and organisations will be able to apply for grant awards to help both large and smaller projects, and benefit as many causes as possible. Priority will be given to environmental causes, and those near Anglian Water’s storm overflows and capital investment works. £57m to tackle more complex issues within at least 8 high priority catchments
This will include installing sustainable drainage solutions (SuDS) to combat drainage and flooding issues, upgrading community-owned assets that contribute to flooding, and other local initiatives. In addition, the Company will accelerate planned investment to reduce spills at high-risk sites with new storage, removing surface water and misconnections and optimising the existing network. This has already been trialled in Yaxley.
The company has also agreed to develop and implement a longer term action plan that will ensure spills from storm overflows are minimised and assets are compliant with legal requirements.
Lynn Parker, Senior Director for Enforcement at Ofwat, said: “Our investigations found failures in how Anglian Water and South West Water have operated and maintained their sewage works and networks, which has resulted in excessive spills from storm overflows. These are serious breaches and are unacceptable.
“We understand that the public wants to see transformative change. That is why we are prioritising this sector-wide investigation which is holding wastewater companies to account for identified failures. We are pleased both companies have accepted that they got things wrong and are now focusing on putting that right and taking action to come back into compliance. We expect all companies to do the same so that customers can regain confidence in their water company and the critical service they provide.”
Mark Thurston, CEO for Anglian Water, commented: “We understand the need to rebuild trust with customers and that aspects of our performance need to improve to do that. Reducing pollutions and spills is our number one operational focus, and we have both the investment and the partners in place to deliver on those promises as part of our £11bn business plan over the next five years. In the meantime, we have proposed this redress package, recognising the need to invest in the communities and environments most impacted.
“It will take time and investment to achieve a significant reduction in spills, but we are making good progress. By 2030 we have allocated a dedicated £1bn for measures such as storm tanks, upgraded monitoring, nature-based solutions like wetlands, and sustainable drainage solutions to halve the number of spills.
“Equally, it will take time to upgrade the vast network of assets we manage; we have hundreds of treatment works, more than 100,000 kilometres of pipes and sewers underground, many hundreds of water storage points and storm tanks – all of these need to be part of a significant capital programme to maintain and renew what is there. This is what will be set out in our plans - to ensure we can make the improvements that are best for the environment and delivers on our promises to customers.”
The Peterborough Telegraph asked Anglian Water if the result of the investigation would lead to customers seeing their bills rise. This was not answered.