Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr
Thérèse Coffey): The Price Review is an independent
five-yearly process, run by the economic regulator Ofwat, to
determine investment plans for water companies and customer bills
over the next five years, in this case from 2025 to 2030 period.
This will include assessing future investment in enhancing the
resilience of our water supplies, environmental improvements, and
customer support.
Following Ofwat’s timeline, I can inform the House that by Monday
2 October all water companies had submitted draft business plans
for Price Review 2024 (PR24) and published them on their
websites.
The draft water company business plans submitted are the opening
position in an independent regulatory process stretching to the
end of 2024. I expect Ofwat and the Environment Agency to now
look closely at the plans to ensure they meet legal requirements
and give customers the best value for their money. We do not
allow water companies to charge consumers twice for investment
that should already have happened and through the PR24 process
Ofwat will scrutinise business plans to ensure this does not
occur.
Following this scrutiny process, Ofwat’s decision on total
investment and consumer bills will be finalised in December 2024.
This builds on Ofwat’s announcement on 26 September that
following its assessment of water company performance against
targets set for 2022/23, under-performance by the majority of
companies means £114 million will be returned to customers next
year.
I am also taking this opportunity to update the House on recent
developments pertaining to the government’s actions to reduce
discharges from storm overflows.
On Friday 15 September the High Court ruled in favour of the
government’s Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan, following
challenges brought by WildFish and others. All claims were
dismissed, meaning the government won on all grounds considered
by the High Court. The judgment supports the government position
that the targets under the government’s Plan goes substantially
further than existing legislation to tackle the use of storm
overflows.
The government welcomes the High Court’s decision and has always
been clear that it will go further and faster to tackle the issue
of storm overflows wherever possible.
That is why on Monday 25 September, following consultation, the
government published an expanded Storm Overflows Discharge
Reduction Plan, extending the targets of the Plan to coastal and
estuarine storm overflows. We have also expanded the list of
storm overflows which are prioritised for early improvement, to
include both Marine Protected Areas and Shellfish Water Protected
Areas.
The targets outlined in the expanded Storm Overflows Discharge
Reduction Plan provide an achievable, credible route to tackling
sewage and delivering the improvements customers expect without
disproportionately impacting consumer bills.
Furthermore, recognising public calls for action to tackle
plastic pollution in waterways, on Saturday 14 October the
government also launched a public consultation on a proposed ban
of wet wipes containing plastic. This will help tackle wet wipes
containing plastic breaking down into microplastics over time,
which can be harmful to the environment and human health. The
consultation delivers on Defra’s commitments set out in the Plan
for Water.
