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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will take steps to increase the number of local authorities providing Ministers with results from risk assessments of private water supplies.

Local authorities have a regulatory duty to provide the Secretary of State (in practice, the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI)), with a summary of the results from the risk assessment no longer than 12 months after the day on which it was carried out. Local authorities are regularly reminded of their duties, and where they may not be being complied with, in DWI’s annual report on the quality of private water supplies in England. We would expect local authorities to comply with their statutory duties.