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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress he has made in improving water quality in South Shropshire constituency.

Cleaning up our rivers is a top priority. The Environment Agency’s (EA) Water Industry Regulation Transformation Programme is delivering more inspections and pushing water companies to perform better, and water companies are investing over £11 billion between 2025-2030, to improve nearly 3,000 storm overflows across England and Wales.

In the West Midlands in 2024/25, water companies undertook over 160 actions aimed at improving sewage treatment works (STWs) and storm overflow discharges to improve water quality, and over 100 actions aimed to prevent deterioration of water quality.

In this constituency, 14 improvement schemes were delivered at STWs between 2020–2025, with further improvements at 11 STWs and 57 at storm overflows.

During 2024/25 over 800 compliance inspections were conducted at Severn Trent Water sites, aiming to rise to 1700+ in 2025/26. The EA will attend more minor pollution incidents and continue to attend all serious pollution incidents, not hesitating to take appropriate enforcement action.