When I became Environment Secretary in February 2020, I made it a priority to take the steps needed to fix the long-standing problem associated with storm overflows in the water treatment system. This has been a problem in Cornwall as well as most other parts of the country for too long.
The problem is a legacy of the Victorian sewage system we have because street drains in towns connect to the sewerage system and when you have high rainfall events, the whole system is overwhelmed, and these combined stormwater and sewage overflows are then triggered. Since the 1960s, new build properties have required a separate surface water drainage system but all too often these systems also found their way back to the sewerage system.
One of the first things I did when I joined the Cabinet with responsibility for this policy area was to change the instructions to Ofwat, the water regulator so that when they set priorities and prices for water companies, significantly reducing the use and impact from storm overflows was at the top of their priorities. I was the first Secretary of State to take this action. The cost of removing all 15000 storm overflows completely would be hugely expensive with estimates ranging from £300 billion to £600 billion which is why governments of all colours down the decades had delayed action. However, for a smaller investment, we could tackle the worst of the overflows and reduce the harm from all of them and that is the plan I set out this week.
Problems like this are longstanding and the solutions take time but the action I took two years ago is already leading to the new investment needed. Between 2020 and 2025 there will be an investment of around £3 billion directed at this problem and the number of discharges is set to reduce by about 25 per cent by 2025. The plan I published this week will go further requiring water companies to deliver their largest ever environmental infrastructure investment - £56 billion capital investment over 25 years - into a long-term programme to tackle storm sewage discharges by 2050. The plan front loads action is particularly important and sensitive areas, including designated bathing waters and high-priority ecological sites. By 2035, water companies will have to improve all storm overflows discharging into or near every designated bathing water; and improve 75% of overflows discharging to high-priority nature sites.
Through the Environment Act put in place last year we also put in place new monitoring and transparency requirements. Monitoring of the storm overflow network has increased 14-fold in the last five years and the Environment Agency will monitor 100% of storm overflows by next year. It is because of these new requirements for monitoring that there has been more knowledge of the problem and therefore more media coverage recently, but the Environment Agency is also using the new data to bring multiple prosecutions against water companies where they have been failing and, in some cases, possibly breaching their permit conditions.
It is the nature of politics that you often end up dealing with the consequences of the failure of past governments to act and usually get blamed for their failure. The important thing is to use the position you have to take the action needed to address these deep-seated problems, even though the benefits may not be seen until a few years after you have left the role.
