Sewage

Victoria Collins Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

We welcome the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, but we urge the Government to go further, particularly with regard to the protection of chalk streams. That is very personal to me and to many Members across the House. I have campaigned for many years to stop the dumping of raw sewage and for the better protection of our chalk streams, alongside campaign organisations, the Cam Valley Forum, and the many local river action groups for the Mel, the Granta, the Shep, the Rhee, the Wilbraham, the Orwell and the Cherry Hinton brook.

Some progress has been made locally, with the hard-won award of a bathing water designation for the Sheep’s Green section of the River Cam. That has secured much-needed financing for clean-up actions by Anglian Water of the small sewage treatment work upstream in Haslingfield. However, not all our chalk streams can have bathing water designation as a mechanism of protection, especially when they have to struggle and suffer with overwhelmed small sewage treatment works as a result of unprecedented housing growth and development in our area. That is why I bemoan the fact that the 2025 Act and the Planning and Infrastructure Bill do not get rid of the damaging automatic right to connect for developers, which means that water companies cannot say whether they have the capacity to manage sewage in the area.

[Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)]

My hon. Friend talks about overwhelmed sewage works. The Markyate sewage works in my constituency has now had 3,000 hours of non-stop overflow, including sewage, which enters our precious chalk streams. Does she agree that that is why it is so important that we have blue flag status to increase the responsibility and accountability of water companies, which should not take our chalk streams for granted?

[Pippa Heylings]

I agree. In my South Cambridgeshire constituency alone, rivers and streams were polluted by sewage 728 times in 2024, lasting over 9,700 hours. That is the disgraceful legacy of the last Conservative Government. We need the protection that my hon. Friend mentions.

We bemoan the fact that the Secretary of State and the Government got rid of the chalk stream recovery pack. That is distressing to all those who care for chalk streams, and it is why we need practical measures such as the blue flag status, and for rivers and chalk streams in a blue flag corridor and water catchments to have the protections they need. That would give the public confidence in water quality and would enable regular water testing, biodiversity checks and better community involvement, boosting transparency.