Private water companies are set to increase bills by about £156 to fund new plans to prevent 140,000 sewage overflow spills per year.
Outrage over the contamination of England’s waterways has been growing for months, which critics say has polluted ecosystems and sickened swimmers.
Companies spewed sewage into rivers and coastlines, some of it illegal, for more than 1,750,000 hours last year, amounting to 301,091 spills overall or an average of 825 a day.
As much as this was slightly lower than the year prior, the Environment Agency said it was less the water companies preventing the spills and more the drier weather not leading to flooding.
Now providers will invest £96 billion across the next five years to pay for 10 new reservoirs, cut leaks and stop the equivalent of 6,800 Olympic swimming pools worth of sewage spills, Water UK said today.
The body with represents the water industry said this will be nearly ‘double’ current investment levels.
But customers are expected to foot the bill. Amid a cost of living crisis which has already seen energy costs surge, the average water bill in England is expected to be £7 per month higher by 2025.
By 2030, bills will be £13 higher each month, or about £156 more per year.
Water UK said: ‘While increasing bills is never welcome, investment in our water system is essential to ensure the security of our water supply in the future.’
The industry said the upped bills would help fund, among other things, modernising the nation’s Victorian-era sewers and cutting leakage by more than a quarter by 2030.
Other upgrade works include nature-based schemes to manage rainwater and new technology to manage flows.
Firms have also agreed to more than double the number of households that will receive financial support, rising by 2,000,000 to 3,200,00.
Surfers Against Sewage, a charity that monitors pollution, criticised the announcement.
‘With all the revelations on the scale of the sewage scandal, the public is rightly going to be shocked by any increase in bills,’ Josh Harris, the group’s head of communications, told Metro.co.uk.
‘Water companies have paid out over £60,000,000,000 in dividends in the last 30 years whilst our sewerage infrastructure has been left to crumble. We’re demanding transparency on this process and that any additional cost is first covered by cutting dividends and executive bonuses.
‘Water companies have the chance to begin to put things right with their five-year plan, we are going to be watching and engaging to make sure that they do.’
The plans have been passed onto Ofwat to sign off on by December.
The energy regulator said in a statement that the proposals will be ‘subjected to forensic scrutiny’, with affordability and the environment being key concerns.
‘Customer bills must be fair,’ Ofwat said. ‘Customers will only pay for future investment, not past company mistakes.’
David Henderson, chief executive of Water UK, urged Ofwat to give the water sector’s 2025-2030 proposals the all clear ‘as fast as possible’.
He said: ‘Approving the plans is necessary so that we can provide the highest quality drinking water for a growing population, ensure the security of our water supply in the future and reduce the use of storm overflows as much as possible.’
Currently, water and sewage companies can only dump untreated waste only in exceptional circumstances, such as severe storms. Yet as campaigners point out, the nation’s water infrastructure is poorly adapted to extreme weather so gets overwhelmed easily.
The UK is consistently ranked as one of the worst countries in Europe for water quality, Surfers Against Sewage says.
The water companies’ proposals apply only to England because Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland manage their own sewerage treatments.
Environment secretary Therese Coffey welcomed Water UK’s announcement, saying ‘major improvements’ were required to fix the waterways and firms must ‘step up and deliver lasting changes’.
‘Customers should not pay the price for poor performance and they should use the full powers we have given them on behalf of consumers,’ she added.
Steve Reed MP, Labour’s shadow environment secretary, added: ‘The water industry and its regulatory framework are broken – with stinking, toxic sewage lapping up on our rivers, lakes, and seas.
‘This scandal is the Conservative’s fault – the government cut back enforcement and monitoring against water companies releasing this filth, and are now failing to prosecute them when they are blatantly breaking the law.
‘It is shocking that during a cost-of-living crisis, consumers are now being expected to pay the price, whilst water CEOs are pocketing millions in bonuses.’
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