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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the financial implications for her policies of trends in the level of debt acquired by water companies.

Water companies are allowed to raise debt to fund the delivery of their services.

Ofwat, as the independent economic regulator, assesses and monitors the financial resilience of each company, including levels of debt, on an individual and ongoing basis and challenges companies where they identify this is needed.

Over recent years, as investment requirements have risen, Ofwat has taken further steps to strengthen the financial resilience of companies. This includes increasing its financial monitoring and improving levels of reporting transparency. As part of this work, Ofwat produces an annual ‘Monitoring Financial Resilience Report’ to provide a publicly available assessment of the financial resilience of each water company.