Record Fine for Yorkshire Water as the company is among three water firms facing record £168m fines.
With sewerage spillages into England’s seas and rivers more than doubling last year, Yorkshire Water, Northumbrian Water and Thames Water face £168m combined fines by the industry regulator over historic sewage spillages, the BBC News web site reports.
The proposal, which is part of Ofwat‘s (the water regulator), largest ever investigation into water company performance will now go to public consultation. The regulator’s investigation examined whether the three companies have been providing consumers with the level of service they are entitled to under the law. It found that the three companies failed to adequately invest in and maintain their networks, leading to repeated releases of raw sewage into the country’s waterways.
On Tuesday 6 August it proposed a record fine Yorkshire Water of £47m, along with £17m for Northumbrian Water. For Thames Water it is proposing the largest fine on record of £104m. David Black, the regulator’s chief executive, said “Ofwat has uncovered a catalogue of failure by Thames Water, Yorkshire Water and Northumbrian Water in how they ran their sewage works and this resulted in excessive spills”.
The BBC reports that a Yorkshire Water spokesperson said “we are disappointed with Ofwat’s response to their investigation into our wastewater treatment networks. Since the start of this process in November 2021, we have co-operated fully with the investigation. But in its findings Ofwat said Yorkshire Water “had failed to recognise the full extent of its breaches”. At Yorkshire 16% of sewage works had operational problems and 45% of its storm overflows were in breach of their permits.
Meanwhile the current edition of Private Eye (no 1629) reports Yorkshire Water‘s chief executive Nicola Shaw received a bumper reward of more than £1m last year, despite the company being named the second worse in England for sewage spillages. And if that wasn’t enough, Ofwat has provisionally agreed a bill hike of 25% to our bills by 2030 – an average increase of £107 per household.
You can read more on this story here.