Yorkshire Water customers should not have to pay to clean up the company’s pollution - Andrew Vine

Everybody dismayed and angered by the fouling of Yorkshire’s rivers and seas with filth will have applauded the government’s pledge to get tough on water companies.

Threats of two years’ jail for water bosses who cover up sewage dumping might concentrate minds in an industry that has got away with causing immense harm to the environment for far too long.

But although last week’s announcement of new measures against companies who have made fortunes out of water while polluting with impunity is a step in the right direction, the government needs to go much farther in bringing this greedy and irresponsible industry to book.

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The Environment Secretary, Steve Reed, in outlining the new sanctions for sewage dumping said he was looking at further legislation to fundamentally reform how the water industry is run.

Stamford Bridge was named as an area in which Yorkshire Water discharged sewage into a site of special scientific interest. PIC: Simon HulmeStamford Bridge was named as an area in which Yorkshire Water discharged sewage into a site of special scientific interest. PIC: Simon Hulme
Stamford Bridge was named as an area in which Yorkshire Water discharged sewage into a site of special scientific interest. PIC: Simon Hulme

Good. It’s long overdue that somebody finally gets a grip on one of the worst national scandals of the past half-century.

Because make no mistake, that’s what the water industry is. This collection of private monopolies, overwhelmingly under foreign ownership, have milked vast profits out of British bill-payers while disregarding their fundamental duty to keep watercourses clean. They are also guilty of making cynical attempts to disguise the problem.

In the face of public fury, they even have the effrontery to demand even more from customers to stop the pollution.

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That’s like being mugged in the street and being told by the person who has just snatched your mobile phone that you’ll have to pay him if you want it back.

A few ideas Mr Reed might consider for reforming the water industry would include clawing back the £26m in bonuses paid out to executives between 2020 and 2023 whilst human excrement poured into waterways.

Another would be to tell the companies that since they are responsible for pollution, they must pay to clean it up and prevent further spills. It should not be the public who foot the bill.

And Mr Reed should also look at the ultimate owners of the water companies, who have for decades seen them as a licence to print money without putting enough back in, and investigate what can be done to make them more accountable for the poor state of what is critical national infrastructure.

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Yorkshire Water would be a good place to start with that one, given that the company’s owners are a long way from our county.

The four investors in the group are GIC Special investments, formerly known as the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, Corsair Infrastructure Management, of New York, Deutsche Asset Management, of Frankfurt and SAS Trustee Corporation, of Australia.

It would be an interesting exercise to present a list of the following names to the suits in the boardrooms in Singapore, New York, Frankfurt or New South Wales and see if anybody had a clue what they were – Ouse, Aire, Humber, Calder, Wharfe, Nidd, Esk.

Maybe they would recognise some of Yorkshire’s great rivers. Or maybe not, because the principal motivation of investors like these is the return on their money rather than close involvement in whether those rivers are regularly being polluted.

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If the government was able to find a way of reaching into those boardrooms to express public displeasure at what investors are ultimately responsible for, they might sit up and start taking more notice.

They should, because the company their money is in has a terrible record. That was shown by the £47m fine for sewage spills that the watchdog Ofwat plans to levy on Yorkshire Water, which was one of only three companies sanctioned last month.

The fine was the second-highest, behind the £104m slapped on Thames Water. Yorkshire Water said it was “disappointed” by the decision.

No doubt, but nothing like as disappointed as people seeing the watercourses they love fouled by human waste or barren of fish because they are so dirty. Nor will the company be as disappointed as families who dare not risk paddling in the sea at Scarborough or Bridlington.

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The company’s disgraceful record was underlined by its committing more than 200 Environment Agency permit breaches over the past two years, as revealed by The Yorkshire Post last week.

Yorkshire Water has let this county down with its record on pollution. It has not only failed our precious natural environment, it has betrayed it.

Its oft-repeated answer to the scandal of pollution amounts to an insult to the people of Yorkshire. The company has a £7.8bn plan to improve supplies and reduce pollution, but it expects us to pay for it via increased bills of about £150 a year by 2030.

If the Environment Secretary is serious about reforming the water industry and on the side of people appalled at what has been done to our rivers and seas, he should be ruling this out.

A vast amount of profit has flowed the way of Singapore, the USA, Germany and Australia from the bill-payers of Yorkshire. Now the government should insist it’s payback time.

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