The way water companies submit data for environmental permits needs to be reformed, Water UK has said.
Speaking at Utility Week’s WWT Wastewater Conference, the trade body’s head of policy Stuart Colville said that the current environmental permitting process undermines public trust in water companies.
Under the current rules water companies self-report on environmental performance related to permitted activities, including discharges from sewer overflows.
Colville said this opens the door for critics to question the reliability of the data, with politicians and the public “falsely” believing that “companies decide on their own compliance”.
“The public and politicians are in disbelief that companies are expected to decide on their own compliance, that is the perception,” he said.
“The system is in need to reform, because without change every time we make progress critics will argue falsely that the data is unreliable and nothing can be trusted.”
While Colville did not detail what reforming the environmental permitting process would look like, he did call for greater funding for the Environment Agency.
He said it was “obvious” the regulator lacked resources to do its job, and added: “They should have been given more people years ago and should be allowed to pay their officers more.”
Colville said that funding should be increased to all parts of the regulator to end the “undervaluing of environmental protection” and to restore faith in regulatory process and the wider sector.
“If the regulator is seen as failing, it undermines trust in the whole system – the whole thing collapses,” he added.
He urged the industry, government, NGOs and others to “back the Agency to stay confident, work backwards from the outcomes it wants to achieve and help it secure those outcomes with more agility and openness to new ways of delivering”.
Colville added that the Environment Agency needs to prepare for the upcoming surge in investment by expanding its capacity and updating its own approaches to permitting and planning. He warned that “the public would not forgive any unnecessary hold-ups”.
For the part of the financial regulator, Water UK recognised there has been a shift at Ofwat and a recognition that work is needed, especially around asset health, but Colville stressed it had not gone far enough.
“If you read Ofwat’s stuff, it doesn’t scream that it’s an organisation that is obviously overburdened with thoughtful self-reflection on their own role and contribution to the current situation we find ourselves in,” he added.
This position, he said, makes it harder to have a forward-looking approach to regulation, one “that fully grasps the two big public policy imperatives that affect us” – securing water supplies against drought and cleaning up the environment.
He also chastised the organisation for its “cultural aversion to fixing certain common world problems” that makes real world outcomes worse.
Meanwhile, from government Colville said further support is needed to deliver on its promises to implement Schedule 3 on sustainable drainage and the four policy proposals in the storm overflows reduction plan, which were outlined 18 months ago.
“We can’t just have an investment programme and ignore the policy landscape. It’s fundamental for accelerating and supporting progress,” Colville said.