There are calls for Northumbrian Water to be “completely reformed from top to bottom” amid outrage over raw sewage being dumped into the North East’s waters.
The company was among those which issued an apology in mid-May for acting too slowly on spills, but has warned that the public’s water bills will increase in order to pay for a £1.7bn plan to tackle the problem. There has been mounting anger over rivers and seas being contaminated by untreated sewage, with recent figures from campaign group Surfers Against Sewage showing that there were 963 hours worth of discharges into bathing waters across the Northumbrian Water area in 2022.
Liberal Democrats in Newcastle are the latest to call on the water firm, which supplies a large area from Berwick down to Middlesbrough, to undergo radical changes. Mark Ridyard, the party’s Parliamentary candidate in the Newcastle East constituency, said: “This announcement is too little too late after years of putting public health at risk and large-scale environmental damage, which has previously been arrogantly dismissed by the water industry.
Read More: Northumbrian Water confirms bills will need to rise to pay for sewage investment
“This apology means nothing unless the firm is completely reformed from top to bottom. Protecting the environment should be more important than making overseas investors rich and richly rewarding directors’ failure."
The Lib Dems have called for water firms to become “public benefit companies,” making environmental goals more important than profits and compelling them to have environmental experts sit on their company boards.
Labour has also been fiercely critical of water bosses, with party analysis last year showing that there were 114,333 sewage spills into North East waters – an average of one every 23 minutes. Scott Dickinson, leader of Northumberland’s Labour group, last week said it was “outrageous” that households would be made to pay for modernisation works to tackle the problem when privatised water companies are paying out millions in profits to shareholders.
Northumbrian Water’s accounts for the year ending March 31, 2022 showed that it paid out an interim dividend of £58.2m and a final dividend of £55.4m to its Hong Kong-based owner, CK Infrastructure Holdings. The company, which recently announced world-first plans to due drones to carry out improved water quality tests in remote areas, said it was “striving to do better” to improve environmental standards.
A spokesperson added: “We already have 32 out of our 34 bathing waters rated as good or excellent, the lowest level of pollutions in the country and the highest possible 4 star rating for our environmental performance from the Environment Agency.
"But we know we need to do more and we are investing more than £80m towards reducing our use of storm overflows and upgrading our wastewater network between 2020 and 2025. From 2025 to 2030 we will invest a further £1.7bn in a massive environmental programme to stop storm overflow spills and improve the environment.
“Because of this huge investment, we will need to borrow more, our shareholders will have to put in more money and our bills will need to increase. We expect our combined bills to still be amongst the lowest in the country. We know that any rise in bills will not be welcome, and we’ve worked hard to keep our services affordable, limiting this increase to only what is absolutely necessary and making sure financial support is available for anyone who needs it.”
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