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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government who are the project representatives for the Thames Tideway Tunnel project, and what are their roles and responsibilities.

The Liaison Committee has been established to oversee the delivery of the Thames Tideway Tunnel project and is made up of senior representatives from each of the parties to the project, Tideway, Thames Water Utilities Limited, and the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The Committee meets quarterly, with representatives from the Environment Agency and Ofwat attending as observers. Following a competitive process, the multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy firm Mott McDonald was appointed as the Independent Technical Assessor for the project, with a duty to review, evaluate, comment, verify and advise as applicable the members of the Liaison Committee and Ofwat on Tideway’s assessment of project costs, quarterly reports to the Committee, and such engineering and other technical issues that may arise as the project progresses. Full details of the role and responsibilities are set out in the project Liaison Agreement, which is available on the Defra pages of the GOV.UK website