Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many storm overflow discharges there have been in South Holland and The Deepings constituency in the last five years.

This Government has significantly driven up monitoring and transparency of water companies in recent years. The number of storm overflows monitored across the English network has increased from 7% in 2010 to 100% now monitored.

To improve transparency this data is now publicly available on the Government website (Event Duration Monitoring - Storm Overflows - Annual Returns - data.gov.uk). This shows the following discharges records for South Holland the Deepings:

• In 2019, 61 discharges were recorded, all from 1 asset.
• In 2020, 52 discharges were recorded, all from 1 asset.
• In 2021, 267 discharges were recorded, from 7 different assets.
• In 2022, 187 discharges were recorded, from 7 different assets.

The difference in the figures is due to the increase in the number of assets being monitored. 2023 data will be available in March this year.