MPs criticise government for "lack of leadership" in face of water scarcity

MPs have blasted government and regulators for having “collectively taken their eye off the ball” and “a lack of leadership” in the face of threats of regional water shortages that have been heightened by the Covid pandemic.

A report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said government had made “weak efforts” to get people to use less water and “achieved very little” while “no progress has been made in reducing leakage.”

It went on to say government had been “too slow to implement policies that could improve water efficiency such as product labelling and changes to building regulations,” and asserted it had “not done enough to resolve the tension that water companies face between needing to invest in infrastructure to improve water supply and the pressure to keep water bills affordable for consumers, particularly where consumers say they are prepared to pay more.”

Among the issues raised when the PAC questioned the government along with Ofwat and the Environment Agency (see The week in water) were over-abstraction of environmentally unique chalk streams, the absence of impact from the Love Water campaign to encourage reduction in consumption and the regulator’s over emphasis on cutting bills when new investment was vital.

Southern Water chief executive Ian McAulay described the report as a “clarion call for action and leadership.” He highlighted that the gathering pace of changes in weather patterns has dictated a need “to make the call to move quicker in a no regrets fashion” .

He advocated strongly the need for mandated metering – Southern has metered some 90% of its customers and recorded significant reductions in average usage. And it is incentivising households and businesses to reduce consumption with a campaign to bring average usage down to 100l day, that includes water efficiency advice through home visits.

Meanwhile, he said, cutting household consumption is part of a “social contract" and emphasised that “as a big part of our equation” the company has invested in leakage reduction. In the context of the need for investment, McAulay said the same social contract included a need to make bills affordable but “cheap as possible was not the solution.”

The committee’s recommended actions for government to be completed within six months were:

• provide more guidance to water companies on the level of investment needed to ensure resilience by 2050;

• hold water companies to account by publishing annual league tables showing their performance on tackling leakage;

• develop a plan, with adequate funding, to increase public awareness of the need to save water with annual league tables showing water companies’ and retailers’ performance on reducing consumption;

• set out a timetable for when it expects to implement product labelling and any other changes, including to building regulations, designed to improve water efficiency; and

• provide planned mitigation actions and associated timescales for eliminating environmental damage from over-abstraction and sewage outflow.