Housing Development Planning: Water Companies

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for securing today’s important and timely debate on an issue that is critical for my constituents in Chichester and for people up and down the country.

The challenges facing our water infrastructure are well documented, and waste water treatment works across the country have been operating well beyond their capacity for years, with serious consequences. During the general election, I knocked on the door of a lady in my constituency called Alison, who I had not seen in many years. She is a wheelchair user, and she told me how delighted she was to have been moved to a new social home. She had lived there happily for two and a half years until a new development was built in the field just next door. Suddenly her toilets no longer flushed, and she had no access to her wet room. When she spoke to her water company about sewage rising up in her toilet, it recommended that she go to the local pub to use its facilities. That is totally unacceptable for Alison and for every single constituent facing such situations.

When our systems become overwhelmed, storm overflows and sewage spills pollute our rivers, harbours and coastline—failures that are visible nationwide. Water companies have a duty not only to provide clean water, but to manage waste water safely and effectively. Yet the system has been failing for many years. In my constituency alone, there were 990 recorded sewage spills last year, which lasted over 17,000 hours.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

I slightly regret asking my hon Friend to give way at this particular moment, because she has just mentioned 17,000 hours of sewage. As a result of a recent freedom of information request related to my constituency, Thames Water had to reveal to me that it has released sewage into Surrey Heath’s rivers for 543 hours since the general election on 4 July. That is a slightly more modest number than the 17,000 hours my hon Friend’s constituents have faced, but it is none the less hugely significant, given that we have only four sewage outlets in the whole of my constituency. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we want new housing built—which we do—then water companies, which we are often very hard on, need to be treated as strategic partners in development, and forced through tougher regulation to deliver the rapidly growing communities we want for all of our residents?

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we are tough on water companies—and so we should be. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire said, they have made large profits and they have a duty to make sure that every single constituent in this country has access to clean and safe water and that it is disposed of appropriately. But I absolutely agree that they should also be included as a strategic partner, and I will come on to that.

Those failures harm our environment, endanger public health and threaten local economies, particularly tourism, which relies on clean water and a thriving natural landscape. In the Government’s plan for change, they set out an ambitious proposal to build 1.5 million homes in England and accelerate planning decisions. While there is no doubt that new homes are needed, they must be accompanied by the appropriate infrastructure to support them. Water companies have a duty to maintain, improve and extend their water supply networks to account for future water needs, but they are currently excluded from the planning process by not being listed as a statutory consultee.

That omission means that, when a development is proposed for a site where there is no capacity, water companies lack the opportunity to formally object or to insist on necessary infrastructure improvements before the permission is granted. The issue is compounded by how capacity in our waste water treatment plants is measured. Instead of assessing the real-world resilience of our waste water infrastructure, capacity is gauged by measuring dry spells over a 12-month period. That means that a company’s capacity can change year on year, depending on the weather. With an ever-changing climate, that is not an accurate measure of the capacity that a site can cope with. It is not a realistic reflection of demand on new developments.

If they were statutory consultees, water companies could highlight those inefficiencies at an earlier stage, ensuring that essential upgrades are planned and delivered before new developments are approved. In Chichester, we are currently dealing with the absence of a proactive water management system; a lack of capacity at a specific waste water treatment works in Apuldram is delaying the regeneration that the city centre so desperately needs.

To address these challenges, we must adopt a more proactive and consistent approach to waste water management. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire mentioned, sustainable drainage systems—otherwise known as SUDS—are a key element of this. I am pleased that Chichester district council has included SUDS as part of its local plan, which is currently being consulted on, but they should not be applied on an authority-by-authority basis; we should have legislation making SUDS the standard across the country.