Other stories from last week

(by Karma Loveday)

River environment charity WildFish is awaiting a High Court decision on the legality of house-building plans in the Buckinghamshire village of Maids Moreton, which it argued would see an already-overwhelmed sewage works discharging even more sewage into the ‘poor’ rated Great Ouse River. The challenge is against Buckinghamshire Council’s decision earlier this year to sign off on planning for the development, but WildFish said: “The High Court’s decision in this case could serve as an early indicator of some of the potential legal implications surrounding Labour’s proposed Planning and Infrastructure Bill.”

Separately, WildFish said it had received a reply from the environment secretary to a letter asking for all chalk streams in England to be designated as Special Areas of Conservation to give them enhanced protections. The campaigner reported that the letter said restoring chalk streams is fundamental to government river clean-up ambitions, but that there are no plans to add more chalk streams to the list of existing protected sites. WildFish said current chalk protections are inadequate and are further threatened by the Planning & Infrastructure Bill “because it weakens protections in the name of growth”. 

Business Stream has partnered with Plain Numbers – a specialist body focused on improving how organisations communicate numerical information – in a first-of-a-kind effort within the water retail sector to simplify the information shared with all customers, and support vulnerable groups. Plain Numbers will train Business Stream staff to embed its method of simplifying complex numerical data, to help customers understand their bills and make informed decisions. The work is part of Business Stream's delivery of its Customer Vulnerability Framework.

Pennon Group has received the Fair Tax Mark for the eighth consecutive year, in recognition of its tax transparency and good conduct.

Innovation champion Spring has published a guide to the innovation ecosystem. It said the guide maps how ideas move from research to adoption, and outlines the roles of utilities, regulators, funders and partners at each stage – helping innovators see where to go next, who to engage with, and what support is available.

The Energy & Environment Alliance, a global coalition whose members represent more than 50,000 hotels and £360bn in hospitality and real-estate capital, is consulting on establishing the hotel sector’s first financially material sustainability accounting standards, for use internationally. The proposed standards are grounded in IFRS S1 and S2 – the global baseline for sustainability accounting. These frameworks require companies to disclose sustainability-related information with the same rigour and assurance as financial data, covering emissions, resilience, transition plans and other factors that materially influence cash flows, cost of capital and long-term value. Among the considerations for hotels are water and wastewater management, energy management, carbon emissions and food waste.

Ofwat is consulting until 10 December on changing three common environmental Performance Commitments so they align with the updates to the Environmental Performance Assessment methodology for 2026 onwards from the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales. The affected performance commitments are: total pollution incidents (which will abolish ‘no impact’ claims and include dry day spills); serious pollution incidents; and discharge permit compliance. 

Scottish Water last week completed its largest ever water infrastructure investment: a £235m two-way connection between the drinking water networks in Greater Glasgow, Ayrshire and East Renfrewshire. This substantially improves operational resilience for almost one million people in the west of Scotland. The news came as Scottish Water and the International Water Association marked one-year-to-go until the World Water Congress in Glasgow next October.