Water companies in England are asking customers to pay for a record £96bn investment into fixing raw sewage leaks, building new reservoirs and cutting leaks.
The main water and sewerage companies want the regulator to approve their spending plans for 2025-30. They will publish their individual investment strategies on Monday for Ofwat to examine but some details may be withheld from public scrutiny.
Water UK, the industry body, said the £96bn investment was a near doubling of current levels of money going into the privatised water system. The investment across the industry would create 30,000 jobs and 4,000 apprenticeships to help deliver improvements.
The increase in bills will vary across companies. Water UK said the average bill was likely to rise by £7 a month by 2025. This is expected to increase to £13 a month, or £156 a year, in 2030.
The attempt to increase water bills to pay for the investment comes after Ofwat ordered the companies to pay customers back next year as a penalty because progress on leakage and sewage spills had been “too slow”.
The regulator said most water and wastewater companies were underperforming on targets set for 2020-25 to deliver better outcomes for customers and the environment.
David Henderson, the chief executive of Water UK said: “These record-breaking investment proposals will secure our water supply as we deal with a changing climate and a growing population.
“While increasing bills is never welcome, this investment in our country’s infrastructure is essential to ensure the security of our water supply. Water companies are seeking regulatory approval to reduce overflow spills into rivers and seas as fast as possible and to doubling the number of households receiving support to pay their bills.”
Water UK said companies were more than doubling the number of households that were eligible to receive support with bills, to 3.2m, because they understood the impact of the cost of living crisis on families.
The water companies say their investment will pay for 10 new reservoirs to secure water supplies, cut leakage by more than a quarter by 2030 compared with the start of the decade, include £11bn spent to reduce raw sewage spills from storm overflows, which they say is the most ambitious modernisation of sewers since the Victorian era, and includes the creation of new nature-based schemes to manage rainwater and technology to better manage flows.
Ofwat will have to review the plans and approve the spending, and the rise in bills to pay for it.
Campaigners called on the regulator to ensure that water companies were held to account for making the improvements that customers and the environment deserve.
Sheila Adam, from the Clean River Kent Campaign, said: “Ofwat regulates the water industry on behalf of the public, and it should protect the public not the polluters. Unfortunately, it seems that the detail of United Utilities business plans will never be fully available to the taxpayer to review.
“So, we can only call on Ofwat to do its duty and critically examine the water company’s business plans to ensure that they will protect our rivers and seas, from pollution into the future.”
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Ofwat will judge the merit of the investment and the bill rises against the background of an investigation by the regulator into potentially illegal operating of treatment works by water companies.
Alongside this, the Environment Agency is carrying out a criminal inquiry into potential illegal activity in the way water treatment works are run.
Campaigners in Ilkley, where the River Wharfe became the first to be granted bathing water status as a means to stop sewage releases, said Yorkshire Water’s investment to fix the problem must be paid for by the company.
Becky Malby, of the Ilkley Clean River campaign, said: “Yorkshire Water has been told by Ofwat to give us back £20m as a fine for poor performance. That’s about £3.50 per customer.
“Last year it was £15m but we also had a bill hike of £30 per household. Now we are being told to pay again for upgrades at Ilkley that reduce the raw sewage discharges and start to clean up the treated sewage.
“We think that’s Yorkshire Water’s job. We have already paid for Yorkshire Water to treat our sewage and maintain our sewage infrastructure. That’s what they told Ofwat they were doing. We didn’t pay our bills for Yorkshire Water to pollute our river while giving our money to rich shareholders.”
