Information Commissioner praises water industry transparency improvements

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has welcomed information transparency improvements by the water industry. This came in an update from Warren Seddon, director for Freedom of Information, on the ICO’s December intervention, which called for water companies to be transparent by default under the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR).

Seddon said all companies had committed to publish information relating to start and stop times of sewage discharges on a monthly basis across England and Wales. Moreover that there were “many examples of other good practice” including “introducing an 'open by default’ culture, investing in staff training including ‘lunch and learn’ sessions, referencing the EIR in relevant Codes of Conduct, creating new disclosure logs and tracking common requests to improve proactive disclosure of information. We’ve also seen companies quickly and proactively publishing information following an incident and updating that daily until it has concluded."

Seddon said the ICO team would continue to support the sector’s improvement through participating in EIR forums and monitoring complaints. He cautioned: “Transparency must continue to improve from this point – not slip back. Where we still find attempts to keep the public in the dark, we will not hesitate to consider further action to hold the sector to account”.