This week Richard Benyon, the DEFRA Minister and my predecessor, will meet Alan Lovell the Chair of the Environment Agency. Amongst the items on the agenda will be why the Environment Agency saw fit to refuse my request for a substantial fine upon Thames Water for its sewage discharges in Lambourn between January and March of this year.
When I first wrote to them on 16 January the situation had been persisting for some 11 weeks. In their response they described the situation as “very concerning” but declined to take action because “the environmental damage continues to be low”.
Thames Water has profoundly let this community down and the anglers rally in Victoria Park on 14 April reflected a justifiable fury at its woeful performance and apparent indifference to its legal obligations under the Environment Act 2021.
The Environment Act created the most stringent obligations in history on water companies to reduce discharges into public waterways. Thames Water purported to embrace this challenge – setting itself a goal of 2030 to reduce emissions into chalk streams by 80%. This Government has provided the Environment Agency with exceptional enforcement powers and lifted the cap on fines so that these are effectively unlimited. This means monitoring progress and applying penalties for breaches which, incidentally, will also fund any clean up are now its core responsibility.
Lambourn is just one example where Thames Waters has repeatedly failed to undertake improvements. Last summer, after months of discharge at Hampstead Norreys, the Environment Agency downgraded the River Pang's ecological status to “poor”. I wrote to Thames Water then demanding that they bring forward their upgrade work to the treatment works to this year instead of 2025, which they agreed. But so far there is no sign that the work has commenced and since the start of this year, we have seen rising groundwater levels leading to sewage flooding the village streets.
Now is the time for Thames Water to urgently undertake the required improvement works with a clear timetable for completion. Residents have the right to know what will be done, when it will be finished and what impact it will make on the purity of our public waterways.
Under the new parliamentary boundaries, there will be eight specific sites in the Newbury constituency. They are storm overflows at Newbury, Hamstead Marshall, Kintbury, Hungerford, Winterbourne, East Garston, East Shefford and Chieveley. Thames Water has written to me committing to improvement work on each of them. But speaking in bland generalities and technical jargon like “increased pass forward flow/flow to treatment” and “new screens” tells the average resident nothing about what will be done and when.
Its time to set a comprehensive timetable for this work and for full accountability. We need OFWAT and the Environment Agency to support us in this endeavour. I will be meeting the DEFRA Secretary this week to ask for his support in getting there. And before any of that begins, we need Thames Water to pay for the clean up.