Yorkshire Water has been fined £1.6mn for polluting a Bradford watercourse, after a successful prosecution brought by the Environment Agency. This comes after, the Environment Agency last week released its latest annual performance assessment regarding the water companies in England. Six out of the nine companies failed to achieve higher than a two-star rating out of a possible four-star rating. Yorkshire Water dropped from a four-star rating in 2020 to a two-star rating in 2021, meaning that significant improvement is required.
Over the last 11 rating cycles, Yorkshire Water has been rated at a level two for four separate years, or 36% of the time. They have been rated a three-star level for five other occasions. In 2020, Yorkshire Water was rated four stars, an ‘industry leading’ standard – despite discharging raw sewage into Yorkshire rivers 65,083 times.
Water company board members should be criminally responsible
The Environment Agency report was scathing of all national water companies, stating:
“In 2021, the environmental performance of England’s nine water and sewerage companies was the worst we have seen for years. Measured against our four-star rating, most of them went the wrong way: down. Four companies (Anglian, Thames, Wessex, Yorkshire Water) were rated only two stars, which means they require significant improvement. Two (Southern and South West Water) fell to one star, the bottom of our star ratings, meaning their performance was terrible across the board.
“Company directors let this occur and it is simply unacceptable. Over the years the public have seen water company executives and investors rewarded handsomely while the environment pays the price.”
The report continued in no uncertain terms, calling for prison sentences for the chief executives of the water companies, whose companies continued to pollute. “We would like to see prison sentences for Chief Executives and Board members whose companies are responsible for the most serious incidents. We would also like to see company directors being struck off so they cannot simply delete illegal environmental damage from their CV and move on to their next role.”
Response from campaigners
National campaigner Feargal Sharkey was critical of Emma Howard Boyd, chair of the Environment Agency, and her abnegation of responsibility, referring to her as “hapless”. Along with Nils Pratley of the Guardian, Sharkey wonders how the Environment Agency, as the main public body for protecting the environment in England, has allowed things to deteriorate this far.
He responded to the performance ratings by making the point that two thirds of water companies have scored lower ratings than last year, despite the public outcry at that time. “Water companies’ environmental performance ratings fell yet again in 2021 with six of the nine companies achieving lower scores than in 2020.”
Hugo Tagholm, of Surfers Against Sewage, stated, “The industry has catastrophically failed and urgent legislative and legal action must be taken to prevent a few industry fat cats from robbing the nation of clean rivers and coastlines, thriving with life”.
At the same time, Alastair Campbell commented on Twitter: “I don’t think I have ever read a government watchdog report quite as blunt and brutal as this…it should be a best seller. More importantly it should be a wake up call for the government, the companies and all of us.”
Yorkshire Water fined £1.6mn for sewage pollution
According to the Environment Agency performance indicators below, Yorkshire Water increased its number of pollution incidents from 125 in 2020, to 143 incidents in 2021 – an increase of approximately 14%. Serious pollution incidents have also increased by over 65% between 2020 and 2021.
When contacted for comment, a Yorkshire Water spokesperson said: “We’re disappointed with our Environmental Performance Assessment rating following a five-year period where we’ve continued to reduce pollution incidents and our impact on the environment. However, we understand there is more to do and are currently working with customers and stakeholders locally to understand their environmental ambitions in the region. Environmental improvements form an integral part of our business plan for the next five years and beyond.”
In recent days, Yorkshire Water has been fined £1.6mn for polluting a Bradford watercourse, after a successful prosecution brought by the Environment Agency. The district judge confirmed that Yorkshire Water knew from August 2017 that there were problems with the George Street detention tank and concluded that the company would have known a discharge into the tank would cause an unlawful discharge into the beck. He described Yorkshire Water as being “reckless in this offending, due to the fact that they were taking some steps but not with sufficient urgency”.
Regulatory gaps: self-regulation is not working
The Environment Agency report notes with concern that “only 56% of serious incidents were self-reported by the water companies which is concerning their impact on the environment”. The agency therefore is reliant on water companies submitting accurate information, regulating themselves, and acting in a responsible manner. But there is no improving trend of water companies self-reporting pollution incidents, with only 77% of recorded incidents being reported by water companies.
Yorkshire Water’s level of reporting was lower than the industry average, with only 66% of all pollution incidents being self-reported. Some 54 incidents were reported by others in 2021, with 107 incidents being reported by Yorkshire Water. It is a concerning industry system where water companies can repeatedly not report the total number of pollution incidents.
Sharkey identifies this key issue when he says, “We still don’t even know how much sewage is tipped into waterways because we rely on the companies to tell us”.
Has the Environment Agency failed to act?
Howard Boyd is due to leave the Environment Agency in September this year, with Alan Lovell recently being approved by MPs as her successor as chair. The tone of the foreword of the environmental performance report, with its calls for criminal prosecutions and significant financial penalties for water companies, on the one level appears courageous and powerful. On the other hand, Howard Boyd has been chair for five years now and has been on the board for 13 years, with little progress being made to regulate the industry.
In 2019, she wrote an open letter in the Times claiming that “Water quality in our rivers is now better than at any time since the start of the Industrial Revolution”.In 2019, water companies discharged raw sewage into rivers on more than 200,000 occasions, for more than 1.5 million hours.By 2020, UK water companies, under the watch of the Environment Agency, discharged raw sewage into rivers on more than 400,000 occasions, or for more than 3.1 million hours.
Water companies do not fear the wrath of the Environment Agency, as this unchecked increase suggests and therefore the tone and language of the outgoing chair can be viewed as rather empty and hollow.
