Government launches water ombudsman to boost consumer protection
Steve Reed is setting up a new water ombudsman with legal powers to resolve disputes, rather than the current voluntary system that is thought to lack teeth.
The environment secretary is embarking on 'the biggest overhaul of water regulation in a generation' amid growing anger at poor service, spiralling bills and the pollution of Britain's waterways.
He pledged on Sunday to cut pollution in Britain's rivers in half by the end of the decade, eliminating it completely by 2035.
And on Monday he will outline the latest changes, which will expand the role of the Consumer Council for Water (CCW), bringing the sector into line with other utilities by creating a legally binding consumer watchdog.
The ombudsman will also provide a single point of contact for consumers with complaints, instead of leaving them uncertain about where to go.
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the new watchdog would help "re-establish partnership" between water companies and consumers.
In May, a survey by the CCW found trust in water companies had reached a new low, with less than two-thirds of people saying they provided value for money.
Only 53 per cent said they thought what water companies charged was fair, even before the impact of a 26 per cent increase in bills that came into effect in April.
The new ombudsman is part of Mr Reed's wider plans for a "root and branch reform" of the water industry, set to be unveiled alongside a major review of the sector on Monday.
Following publication of the review, he is expected to say: "The water industry is broken. Our rivers, lakes and seas are polluted with record levels of sewage.
"Water pipes have been left to crumble into disrepair. Soaring water bills are straining family finances.
"Today's final report from Sir Jon Cunliffe's Independent Water Commission offers solutions to fix our broken regulatory system so the failures of the past can never happen again."
The key recommendation is expected to involve scrapping Ofwat and creating a new regulator, which could incorporate the work of the CCW.
Mr Reed on Sunday promised to make the UK's rivers the cleanest since records began with a £104bn investment to rebuild the country's crumbling sewage pipes.
Speaking to the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Mr Reed said Labour would unleash a 'water revolution' in response to Sir Jon's review.
He said leaky pipes and crumbling infrastructure has cost taxpayers tens of billions of pounds, promising the party would look to eliminate sewage pollution in rivers completely by 2035.
And, amid speculation Ofwat is to be scrapped, he said the water regulator 'has failed everyone'.
Mr Reed said: 'I'm making an absolute commitment, and I'm committed to delivering it.
"My intention, assuming I'm lucky enough to still be in the same job in five years' time, I would love to sit here with you then and point to places like Windermere and see how much cleaner they are than today."
Asked whether he would put his job on the line, he said: "Politicians come and say we're going to do things. Of course our job should be on the line if we don't."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
17 minutes ago
- The Independent
Former Tory MP appears in court charged with having false passport
A former Conservative MP has appeared in court accused of having a false passport during the time she was sitting in Parliament. Katie Wallis, 41, of Butetown, Cardiff, the MP for Bridgend in South Wales from 2019 to 2024, became the first openly transgender MP in the House of Commons in 2022. Wallis, who uses female pronouns and was previously known as Jamie, appeared before Cardiff Crown Court on Monday representing herself. The charge was not read out in court, but the defendant previously appeared in Cardiff Magistrates' Court accused of having a false passport 'without reasonable excuse'. Wallis was alleged to be in possession of the document in April 2022, while she was still serving as a Conservative MP. Judge Tracey Lloyd-Clarke, the Recorder of Cardiff, adjourned the hearing for Wallis to either seek legal representation or make an informed decision on representing herself. The judge said: 'I'm going to adjourn this for a short period of time to enable you to decide whether you want to get at least some initial advice.' Wallis will next appear on August 15. Wallis, who appeared in court wearing a pink jacket, was released on bail until the next hearing.
The Independent
17 minutes ago
- The Independent
Long-term triple lock commitment ‘out of scope' of pensions commission
A long-term commitment to the triple lock on pensions is not in the scope of the resurrected Pensions Commission, Liz Kendall has said. The Work and Pensions Secretary has announced that she is reviving the commission, which last met in 2006, to tackle the issue of working age adults failing to put enough money into their retirement savings. Experts have warned that people looking to retire in 2050 are on course to receive £800 per year less than current pensioners. The commission is expected to provide recommendations for how to boost retirement income in 2027. Ms Kendall also confirmed that the next statutory Government review into when and how to raise the state pension age will start work now. 'Unless we act, tomorrow's pensioners will be poorer than today's, because people who are saving aren't saving enough for their retirement,' she said during a speech launching the commission. Lowering the age and earnings threshold at which people are brought into auto-enrolment and as well as looking at easy-access 'sidecar' savings accounts will be among the options the commission looks into. Ms Kendall was asked if she thought it was impossible to maintain the triple lock guarantee given its cost and if she could guarantee it would be in Labour's next manifesto. She said: 'The triple lock is out of scope of the commission. We've got a very clear commitment to that for the entirety of this Parliament. 'And what we're asking the commission to do is genuinely look medium to longer term, the middle of this century, and how the state pension and second pensions work together.' The Office for Budget Responsibility recently said that the triple lock has already cost three times more than initially expected and suggested it was unaffordable in the long term. Ms Kendall was also asked about the potential hit to small businesses from increased automatic enrolment costs. 'I want our small businesses to be successful, but it is also the case, you know, flag forward to the middle of the century, 2050, if we don't act, the amount of pensioner poverty we face will cost everybody if we don't act,' she said. She said she was 'under no illusions about how difficult this will be'. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said 45% of working-age adults were putting nothing into their pensions. The previous pensions commission recommended automatically enrolling people in workplace pensions, which has seen the number of eligible employees saving rise from 55% in 2012 to 88%. DWP analysis suggested 15 million people were under-saving for retirement, with the self-employed, low-paid and some ethnic minorities particularly affected. Around three million self-employed people are said to be saving nothing for their retirement, while only a quarter of people on low pay in the private sector and the same proportion from Pakistani or Bangladeshi backgrounds are saving. Women face a significant gender pensions gap, with those approaching retirement in line to receive barely half the income that men can expect.
The Independent
17 minutes ago
- The Independent
The Cunliffe report into our failing water industry will make a splash
We live in a deeply polarised, politicised world, where anything from changing rooms to the Motability scheme can be subjected to the most extreme invective and propagandised argument. One exception to this is the state of the water industry. This is something that can unite the nation. We can all now agree – Tim Farron, Nigel Farage, Surfers Against Sewage … – that the model introduced when the sector was privatised in 1989 has failed, and that it needs some radical restructuring. Something better needs to be put in place, and it should not actually make matters even worse by costing the taxpayer billions to bail out the shareholders and bondholders invested in companies such as Thames Water, which has all but gone bust. Step forward, then, Sir Jon Cunliffe, career civil servant and practical economist, who has produced an excellent report on reforming the industry at minimal cost to the state and maximum cost to those who got us into this mess. This is a fundamental review that should, in truth, have been undertaken decades ago. We should be grateful to environment secretary Steve Reed for commissioning him to do the work, and for completing it so speedily. Reed has today responded to the report with a bold move of his own, announcing plans to abolish water regulator Ofwat in its current form. However, he has not recommended immediate nationalisation of the industry, which has disappointed some, such as the redoubtable Feargal Sharkey, former Undertones frontman turned clean rivers campaigner who has done more than anyone – sadly, including the politicians – to bring the water companies to account. Sharkey is so apoplectic about what he sees as the failures of the report – essentially, another missed opportunity – that he has already called for Reed to resign. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Surfers Against Sewage say of Cunliffe's report and his 88 recommendations for the government to transform the water industry that 'this is putting lipstick on a pig'. The Labour left, as ever, want water brought back into public ownership immediately. Such critics need to hose themselves down a bit. There's nothing in Cunliffe's report that would prevent any water company that is going bust from being rescued by the taxpayer or the water bill payer, and thus nothing to stop such companies going into a transitional regime that would almost certainly mean nationalisation anyway. This is, in fact, the current situation, and it is probably what will happen to Thames Water – deeply in the debt doo-doo itself – before much longer. It is vastly superior to Rachel Reeves nationalising the firm now and taking on its £15bn in debt. Apart from anything else, there's no room in the public finances for such a move. And that's just one company – there are many more in varying states of financial peril. Of course, Parliament could just pass a bill that takes control of the assets without compensation, but that Bolshevik approach wouldn't encourage private investment in the UK, and would in any case violate human rights – the right not to have property arbitrarily confiscated by the state. Not even the great post-war Attlee administration did that when it took over our run-down utilities. Cunliffe's report therefore leaves the door wide open for nationalisation of the individual companies in the future, but in an orderly manner that doesn't take money off, say, the schools or the welfare budget. That seems eminently sensible and un-ideological. It's a clever approach, but what I like best about Cunliffe's work is that he is telling the nation the hard truth: that someone, somewhere, has to pay for water and to repair the huge underinvestment over decades in what is still basically a Victorian system. Indeed, it is only fair to point out that one of the attractions for the Thatcher government in privatising water all those years ago was that it would avoid the need for the Treasury to pay for the wholesale rebuilding of the pipework and treatment plants that was becoming necessary and increasingly urgent. As with the soon-to-be-privatised railways, the magic of free-market forces would renew the industry, reduce costs and charges, and lead to a lovely sparkling Panglossian future pouring out of every tap and toilet cistern in our kingdom. Now, four decades on, the investment is still needed, and if the private sector can't do it in an acceptable fashion, then taxpayers and bill payers will have to do so. Someone will have to finance all the new reservoirs we haven't built since 1992. Someone will have to find the money to stop the sewage dumps and plug the leaks. They're the same people, of course, and there's a political decision to be made about how the burden is distributed – through a progressive tax system or, more regressively, by hiking water bills. It's unavoidable, whoever owns the networks. On that point, Cunliffe also makes the startling observation that only 12 per cent of households have smart meters, so it's difficult to follow the usual rule that those who consume the most water should pay for it. He's also right to suggest that the water companies should receive some payment from the housebuilders for connecting the planned 1.5 million new homes to the already overstressed water and sewage networks. In the end, it may well be that the supply of such a basic public service as delivering clean running water and removing sewage is incompatible with market forces – especially where this is the only economic activity where a company is not allowed to withhold its product or service. By law, no water company can cut a household off – unlike gas and electricity, or anything else out there. Rightly so, I should hastily add – and nationalisation may well be inevitable, financially and politically. A system where, as in water and the railways, the state sets the standards and dictates what's delivered, regulates the charges and monitors the pay of the directors in a monopoly framework isn't really free enterprise at all – and, as we've seen, works rather unsatisfactorily for all concerned. Strengthening regulation – and, crucially, including financial viability as we do with our banks – is vital, even if it pushes these companies closer to insolvency. Sir Jon, and the government, understand that there's more than one way to skin a water company, and it would be an even greater outrage if the water companies and their owners were to be rewarded for abject failure with a handsome payout from hard-pressed taxpayers. With patience, it will resolve itself.
