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BBC News
a day ago
- Business
- BBC News
Severn Trent plans new Midlands hub at Edgbaston waterworks
Water company Severn Trent has said it will spend £4m repurposing its site in Edgbaston to establish a Midlands hub creating new jobs and relocating refurbishment will see as many as 300 people being based there, including some new entry-level staff, the firm Grade II listed water tower at the site, which was built in 1870, is thought to be the inspiration for the Two Towers in J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the investment will mean "a pipeline of hundreds of future jobs and opportunities", Severn Trent added, with work already under way which will likely take up to 18 months. The site is currently used by water technicians and engineers with some office space which will be revamped to become a flagship base."Birmingham is the biggest city in our region and the UK's second city, so investing in new office space, creating a major Midlands hub and growing our teams here was a no-brainer," Severn Trent's HR direction Neil Morrison said."While the site currently supports our water network teams, this investment will bring up to 300 additional employees to the location, utilising our spaces and bringing more people, teams, and opportunities to Brum."The announcement comes as the company plans a £15bn investment scheme across the Midlands over the next five Morrison said the firm was committed to creating more jobs and he welcomed the announcement of "a number" of entry-level roles opening in Edgbaston in the new few Gill, MP for Edgbaston, said she welcomed the news and to see the transformation of the Trent said while work was under way it expected new teams to be at the site from autumn. Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Guardian
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Thames Water hit with record fine over sewage breaches
Thames Water has been hit with a record £104m fine over environmental breaches involving sewage spills, after failing to operate and manage its treatment works and wastewater networks effectively. The water regulator for England and Wales, Ofwat, confirmed on Wednesday that – on top of penalties for breaches related to dividend payouts – it was issuing the beleaguered water company with £123m worth of fines that would be 'paid by the company and its investors, and not by customers'. Ofwat said its investigation uncovered failings around the company's handling of sewage and wastewater, which amounted to a 'significant breach' of Thames Water's legal obligations. The regulator added that it had caused an unacceptable impact on the environment and customers. 'The company also failed to come up with an acceptable redress package that would have benefited the environment, so we have imposed a significant financial penalty,' the Ofwat chief executive, David Black, said. 'This decision provides certainty for the company for both its past failures and what we expect from the company to comply with its obligations in future.' Thames Water is in the process of trying to find new buyers that would fund its turnaround, with Ofwat saying it provided an 'opportunity to break with the past'. However, the utility company is under a much tighter leash and will now face restrictions over how it distributes cash to shareholders, including any future owners. Ofwat confirmed that it was also fining Thames £18.2m for breaking dividend rules, the first ever penalty of its kind in the industry. It said the company paid out cash to investors despite having fallen short in its services to customers and its environmental record. The fine was first reported by the Guardian in December. Black said: 'We are clear that dividends must be linked to performance for customers and the environment. We will not stand by when companies pay undeserved dividends to their shareholders.' The company is under a 'cash lock-up', after its credit rating recently fell below investment grade. That forces bosses to ask formal permission before giving any more cash to shareholders, until Thames's credit ratings improve and it meets further requirements in its licence. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion The environment secretary, Steve Reed, said the penalties together represented the 'toughest crackdown on water companies in history.' He added: 'Last week we announced a record 81 criminal investigations have been launched into water companies. Today Ofwat announce the largest fine ever handed to a water company in history. The era of profiting from failure is over.'
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Date to fix sinkhole outside homes not yet set
A community is still living with a sinkhole in a residential road outside their homes - four months after it opened up due to a burst water pipe - because Thames Water says it does not have a start date for it to be fixed. Part of Kidmore Road in Caversham Heights, Berkshire, collapsed in mid January following the burst pipe, which disrupted water supplies to about 20 homes. The pipe was fixed but the water firm said grouting was needed to "safely stabilise" the affected area with a date yet to be given by its specialist geotechnical contractors. Once the work gets under way it will take up to 12 weeks to complete. A road closure and diversion route remains in place. The water company said: "We understand that the delay in starting works has caused frustration, and we want to reassure residents that we're doing everything we can to move things forward. "We apologise for the delay and thank residents for their continued patience and understanding. We'll provide another update as soon as the start date is confirmed." You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram. Sinkhole still not repaired after four months Thames Water
Sky News
16-05-2025
- Business
- Sky News
Welsh Water fined £1.35m over sewage discharge breaches
A water company has been fined £1.35m over the monitoring of its effluent discharges dating back four years. Welsh Water was also ordered to pay £70,237.70 in costs after pleading guilty to over 800 breaches of its discharge permits. Water companies have been required to self-monitor their effluent discharges from their sewage and water treatment works since 2010. Welsh Water submitted its own discharge data to Natural Resources Wales (NRW) as part of its annual report. The non-compliances, reported in the firm's 2020 and 2021 reports, were related to recording final effluent samples at wastewater treatment works and summarised into 18 offences. The discharges were spread across 300 sites throughout Wales and Herefordshire. Welsh Water pleaded guilty to 15 of the 18 charges on 16 October, with the remaining charges accepted on 17 December. Over 600 of the breaches were recorded in the 2020 report, which Welsh Water said were mainly caused by internal restructuring and the effects of the COVID pandemic. In 2023, the water company had its status downgraded over a rise in pollution incidents. Sian Williams, head of operations at Natural Resources Wales, said the case highlighted "inadequacies in the processes" at Welsh Water. Ms Williams said NRW believe the "failings shown" could have been avoided if "better contingency planning" had been in place. "This is a stark warning to the company that we will not hesitate to use our enforcement powers to secure the improvements we expect to see," she added. A Welsh Water spokesperson told Sky News it had a "strong record of compliance" with its monitoring obligations before and after the period in question. "No sites were left unmonitored during this time, but the unique circumstances during 2020/21 caused significant challenges and disruption to our operations," they said. While there had been "no identified environmental harm associated with this case" the company recognised its compliance "fell short" in 2020 and 2021 and had entered a guilty plea "at the earliest opportunity". "Welsh Water will continue to work closely with our regulators to ensure that we deliver on our two main priorities, the best possible service to our customers and protecting the environment," the spokesperson added.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Britain's water system is in crisis. How do we keep the taps running?
The footpath winds through the Hampshire woodlands, peaceful and still on a warm sunny day in May. Wasps dart between the vegetation. It's a quiet spot, hidden between the low-rise flats on one side and, on the other, something altogether more dramatic: a vast site that resembles a shallow open quarry. It is in fact a new reservoir, or it will be eventually. For now, it's a scene of brown and red earth, from which rises up an occasional sandy-coloured mound. Yellow diggers crawl to and fro in the distance. While Britain has seen marked demographic change in recent decades, Havant Thicket Reservoir, currently under construction, is the first major reservoir to be built in the country since 1992. On the metal fencing that keeps the public out, a sign says Future Water. It's the name of the company building the project, but it's also the aspiration behind it, which is to safeguard water resources for the South East for years to come. If it sounds reassuring – because who doesn't want their water resources safeguarded? – this industrious picture of forward-thinking is overshadowed by a more worrying reality. Although we're all certain we live on a rain-drenched island, Britain is, in fact, running out of water. This has been the message in recent years, however much we see ourselves as a drizzly country full of puddles and umbrellas, and however extensive and colourful our vocabulary is for damp weather. What damp weather, asks one water company? South-east England is drier than 'Sydney, Dallas, Marrakesh and Istanbul,' Tim Mcmahon, managing director of Southern Water, said earlier this month. 'We need to reduce customers' usage,' Mcmahon told the BBC. 'Otherwise we will have to put other investments in place, which will not be good for our customers and might not be the best thing for the environment,' he added ominously, without offering further details. The company is building the Havant Thicket Reservoir in tandem with Portsmouth Water, with a provisional opening date of 2029. But, alone, it won't be a silver bullet to solve Britain's water crisis, which has been in the works for a number of years. By 2050, England is facing a shortfall of nearly five billion litres of water per day, according to the Government. So how, in this land of showers and downpours, where it spits and it pours and it floods, did we end up here? The first answer comes back to what Mcmahon said: that we're actually not as deluged as we think, not currently. This year has seen the driest start to spring since 1956, the Environment Agency said earlier this month. March was the driest since 1961 and in April many areas received less than half their normal rainfall. While the wet winter boosted groundwater levels, they are expected to continue to decline in most areas, according to the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. Our climate is changing, with the UK set for wetter winters but drier summers in the future, according to the Met Office. But the weather's not the only issue. 'We are all using more water than we used to,' says Nicci Russell, chief executive of the campaign group Waterwise. In the past 60 years, personal water use has more or less doubled to around 140 litres per day, she says. 'That's due to changes in how we use water. When I was little, we had one bath for the family once a week. Now we all shower regularly, we use sprinklers and so on, so we're all using more. The climate emergency means there's less water available when we need it, and you can't magically create new water.' Then there's demographic change to factor in. Since the Victorians built their water network, the UK's population has grown enormously, from around 40 million in 1898 to an estimated 67.6 million by 2022. It is projected to reach 70 million by next year, according to the Office for National Statistics. The legacy of our Victorian infrastructure has been blamed for some of our current problems, and in 2023 Thames Water started replacing 70 miles of leaky pipes across London and the Home Counties that dated from the 19th century at a cost of £700 million. 'The Victorian stuff was built really well but it's old,' says Phil Clisham, a specialist adviser to the Institution of Civil Engineers on water and sewage infrastructure. 'Not enough has been spent maintaining the buried infrastructure. If we maintained current levels of expenditure it would take over a thousand years to replace the sewers.' Meanwhile, reservoirs have been closed in recent years – in some cases because they had reached the end of their working lives, and in some, apparently, to save money – but they have not been replaced. '[S]everal of our water companies preferred to build houses on some of their reservoirs,' Andrew Sells, former chairman of Natural England, wrote in The Telegraph in 2022. There are more than a dozen new reservoirs planned for the next 15 years, but building them isn't always easy. It has been almost two decades since Thames Water first proposed a new reservoir near Abingdon in Oxfordshire. Today opposition to the plans – which the company says are 'crucial to securing future water supply' for its millions of customers – continues to rumble on. Campaigners against the project warn of 'massive' environmental and carbon costs. 'There's a lot of resistance to building reservoirs and new pipelines,' says Clisham. 'People don't like change, we get that, but we have to do this for the good of the nation as a whole.' This week, Thames Water boss Chris Weston admitted he was 'not confident that we won't have to restrict usage' this year, depending on the weather and how much rainfall there is between now and the summer. At the same time, it transpires that Britain's only water desalination plant will spend another summer not in use. The £250 million Thames Water facility in Beckton, East London, paid for by household bills, is meant to provide fresh drinking water but has rarely been switched on in its 15-year existence. The company said it was currently focusing instead on 'essential operational upgrades' required in the area. Convincing the public of the need to cut back may prove a challenge, meanwhile. Already fed up with the repeated pollution of their rivers and seawater with sewage while bills continue to rise, many don't seem in the mood to listen. As the sun blazed down in Arundel, West Sussex, this week, Southern Water customers were ambivalent about the latest warning from their water provider that usage would have to be reduced. 'The way I see it is I pay for my water,' says Mike White from behind the counter in the local butcher's shop. 'We use what we have to.' Others point out with exasperation that this call for them to cut back has come at a time when bills are soaring. Luke, a doctor in his early 40s with two young children, shows The Telegraph his latest water bill: £999 this year, up from £633 last year. 'Does it really make a difference if I have a shower every other day?' he says. He finds it hard to believe Southern England is truly drier than Marrakesh. 'I have watered the garden with a hose [this year] but I don't think we live in a desert. I wouldn't do it if I lived in California.' In a flat down the road, Pat, 73, received a bill of £879 for her two-person household. 'I'm not using that much water,' she says. 'It's only myself and my husband [here].' Helen Bower, who owns Roly's Fudge Pantry on the high street, is equally sceptical. 'I save water anyway,' she says. 'What do they think [we should do], take one shower a week?' Southern Water defends the higher bills, with McMahon saying that 'without them we would not be able to keep taps running in the face of climate change, without taking unsustainable levels of water from the environment.' He stresses the scale of the challenge of ensuring there is enough water to go around. While the company has been working on leakage reduction, nationwide water transfers, pipe replacements and upgrades, and plans for future new sources of water like reservoirs and water recycling projects, 'we also need our customers' support in using water wisely,' he says. Experts have meanwhile been planning solutions to the problem on a national scale. The Independent Water Commission was launched last October to give the government recommendations on reforms to the water sector. Prior to this, in 2018, the National Infrastructure Commission published a report, Preparing for a Drier Future, warning that the chance of a serious drought between now and 2050 was one in four. An extra 4,000 mega litres of water per day would be required for resilience in this scenario, it said. The report recommended measures to increase investment in supply infrastructure and encourage more efficient use of water, to halve leakage by 2050 and develop plans for a national water network. All of which is costly. But not taking action would be costlier. The predicted cost of relying on emergency options over the following three decades was £40 billion, while the cost of building resilience was said to be £21 billion. The main solutions will be a combination of new infrastructure, leakage reduction and reduced usage. There are simple things households can do, insists Russell: cut a minute off your shower time and you could save 15 litres per shower, she says. Only wash clothes when they're truly dirty. Take pride in your golden lawn and avoid using sprinklers. For its part, the water industry is already on the case, says Clisham. 'There's a push now to say we need to start looking after these assets properly. The solutions aren't quick, it takes many years to put them in place. You have to have long-term planning and long-term thinking.' Back at the site of the future Havant Thicket Reservoir, a crane swings back and forth, playing its part in building our water resilience for the future. On the backs of the tipper trucks, amber lights flash a warning that's hard to make out in the dazzling sunshine. Few of us will be hoping for a sodden summer. But a serious water shortage would undoubtedly dampen spirits a great deal more. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
