Mersey Reporter - #Merseybites #News

MEMBER of Parliament for Southport, Damien Moore, is fully endorsing the next stage of the Government's strategy to curb sewage pollution by bolstering legal requirements across the United Kingdom.

Last August, the Conservative Government launched its plan demanding an unparalleled infrastructure program from water companies to counteract the UK's sewage overflows. The Government’s comprehensive 60-page strategy focuses on investments in high priority sites, including protected habitats and bathing waters. Since its launch, £1.6 billion has been expedited to crucial water infrastructure projects, which have consequently reduced thousands of overflow spills each year.

The Government also reemphasised its commitment to impose uncapped penalties, ensuring that polluting companies bear the cost of their environmental impact. With these funds now being reinvested into rivers and water bodies. The next step will place the target in the Sewage Overflow Reduction Plan on a statutory footing.

The Rt Hon Thérèse Coffey MP, Secretary of State for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, has written to water companies requiring a plan on every overflow by the end of June. This builds on work to introduce mandatory monitoring, which is up from just 7% in 2010 to 100% by the end of this year. Thanks to this monitoring, regulators are undertaking the largest investigation into water companies in their history related to illegal sewage dumping, building on record fines of £141m secured since 2015.

Meanwhile the Labour Party has tabled legislation that directly replicates existing Government policy. This includes:-

Bringing in monitoring, which will already be complete by the end of the year;
Requiring a plan to be published, which the Government already set out last year.
Setting legal targets, which the government has already committed to do.
Introducing automatic fines, which reduces the fine available to regulators, rather than increasing them to unlimited as the UK Government will do.

Damien Moore, Member of Parliament for Southport, said:- “Southport residents are rightly disgusted by sewage in our rivers, and so am I. Water companies must ensure that they work to protect our vital waterways from contamination, and if they don’t, I urge Ministers to use the full force of the law, including unlimited penalties. I voted for a package of measures to reduce harms from storm overflows. This includes a new duty on water companies to produce comprehensive statutory Drainage and Sewerage Management Plans, setting out how they will manage and develop their drainage and sewerage system. I remain firmly committed to protecting Southport’s precious waterways, and the people and ecosystems that depend upon them.”

Secretary of State for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, Thérèse Coffey MP, said:- "It was a Conservative Government that introduced 100% monitoring of storm overflows. We’ve brought forward stronger regulations, tougher enforcement, and the largest water infrastructure program in history; an expected £56 billion investment; and we will make fines unlimited so that the polluter always pays."