There is widespread media coverage today following the announcement of a planned protest on water pollution, the ‘March for Clean Water'.

Campaigners are calling on the government to overhaul the water sector by reforming the regulatory system, to address illegal sewage dumping and end all other forms of water pollution.

The government has been clear that the water sector requires fundamental reform and while this will take time, the work of cleaning up our waterways has already begun. In his first week, the Secretary of State for Environment Food and Rural Affairs Steve Reed announced a series of immediate steps towards protecting consumers and ending the crisis in the water sector. These included:

• Ringfencing investment so it can only be spent on upgrades to infrastructure benefiting customers and the environment - and never diverted for bonuses, dividends or salary increases.
• Doubling compensation for households and businesses when their water services are affected.
• Consumers gaining new powers to hold water company bosses to account through powerful new customer panels.

At the State Opening of Parliament on 17 July, the new Water (Special Measures) Bill was announced, which we intend to pass into law by the end of this year. This legislation will give the water regulator new powers to ban the payment of bonuses if environmental standards are not met and ensure water bosses face personal criminal liability for lawbreaking.  It will also introduce new powers for regulators to bring automatic and severe fines for wrongdoing and require real-time monitors to be installed at every sewage outlet.

A Defra spokesperson said:

We share the public’s anger on this issue and have taken immediate steps to reverse the tide on the unacceptable destruction of our waterways.

Our Water Bill will include new powers to ban bonuses and bring criminal charges against law breakers. This is just the first step in our wider reform of the sector.

This Government will never look the other way while water companies pump record levels of sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas.