Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the capacity of water reservoirs in Yorkshire to meet future demand; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Reservoir stocks and river flows in Yorkshire are declining, following recent warm and dry months. However, the current rate of decline is much better than 2022, with Yorkshire Water’s prospects submission indicating that temporary use bans are unlikely to be required this summer.
Planning is essential to ensure that we meet Yorkshire’s future demands and current legislation ensures the water industry deals with climate change challenges, population growth and protecting the environment. Companies must plan for new supplies, and work hard to achieve the ambitious water saving objectives our Government has set, ensuring a twin track approach to water supply and demand.
Yorkshire Water is expected to optimise its system of river, groundwater and reservoirs sources to meet demands. The likely demands and supplies are being modelled by the company and are set out in the statutory plans water companies are required to, and are currently, producing. Reservoirs are managed for that purpose with the company making assessment of capacity and supplies. These plans include customers’ views and look 25 years minimum into the future, setting out the investment needed to meet future demands. They are assessed by my department, including the Environment Agency, Natural England and regulators such as the Drinking Water Inspectorate and Ofwat. The Environment Agency has recently provided comment on all water company draft Water Management Plans, including Yorkshire Water’s.
Defra recently published its Plan for Water which set out the importance of ensuring a clean and plentiful water supply. The National Framework for Water Resources, published in March 2020, outlined England’s future water needs across sectors and by region up to 2050, including public water supplies; direct abstraction for agriculture, electricity production and industry; and the water needs of the environment. The Framework proposes the scale of action needed to ensure resilient water supplies are available to meet the needs of future users; and introduces a greater level of ambition for restoring, protecting and improving the environment which sources of all our supplies.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if her Department will work with the Environment Agency to develop a service level agreement with water abstraction licence holders on time for adaption when licences are changed.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In April we published our Plan for Water, which sets out the importance of ensuring a clean and plentiful water supply, including environmentally sustainable water abstraction. I expect the Environment Agency to take what action is needed to reduce the environmental damage caused by abstraction – this will include changing abstraction licences.
The Environment Agency has indicated that it will consider giving abstractors time to adapt to licence changes on a case-by-case basis. Management options could include, for example, building a storage reservoir to replace a summer spray irrigation licence to abstract from a river. The Environment Agency is currently developing its approach, but current thinking is that it will be up to abstractors to justify why they need time to adapt. There will not be any fixed adaptation time but instead the period of time will be consistent with the environmental risks, the proposed adaptation and how much notice an abstractor has already had of the changes. Where an abstraction is already damaging the environment then it may not be possible for the Environment Agency to allow any time to adapt, especially where an abstraction is damaging a designated site or species. The Government also supports the agricultural sector with its Farming Transformation Fund grants for the construction of new on-farm reservoirs. We are also supporting the creation of national and regional Water Resource Management Plans for agriculture, which will help farmers plan their water resources and ensure better resilience to drought.
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to ensure the protection and preservation of (a) the Ribble and Alt Estuaries, (b) Southport’s sand dune habitats and (c) other aspects of Southport’s coastlines.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
This part of the coast is protected by the following designations; Sefton Coast Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Ribble Estuary Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Sefton Coast Special Area of Conservation, Ribble and Alt Estuaries Special Protection Area (SPA) and Ribble and Alt Estuaries Ramsar. Natural England (NE) provides statutory nature conservation advice to Local Authorities, landowners and others on activities affecting these designated sites to ensure they are protected
NE’s aim for this area is to reconnect coastal designated sites to the low-lying coastal plain and the River Alt by a series of naturally regenerating wetlands and grasslands. Key to achieving this is NE’s work with farmers and landowners to encourage uptake of our Environmental Land Management Schemes and NE’s Catchment Sensitive Farming Advisers support farmers and growers to produce food in a way that protects water, air and soil.
The Environment Agency (EA) has created new saltmarsh habitat on the Ribble Estuary at Hesketh Out Marsh and is strategically looking at other coastal realignment opportunities for both flood risk management and biodiversity net gain benefits.
In 2022/23 the EA funded work with Mersey Rivers Trust investigating the nature and extent of pesticide and herbicide content within the lower reaches of the River Alt. Through Catchment Abstraction Management Strategies (CAMS) the EA also ensures the water resources of the catchments along the Ribble, Alt & Southport coast are sustainable.
Southport is a priority bathing water and the EA will be taking regular water quality samples throughout the coming bathing water season, 15 May to the end of September. Funding from Defra in 2021/22 provided resource for the EA to carry out farm inspections at an additional 30 farms in the South Fylde/Ribble Estuary area. These inspections were focused on developing improvement plans to reduce diffuse pollution impacting the receiving watercourses in the area and thereby the bathing waters at Southport.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what progress he has made on achieving water neutrality on his Department’s estate.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The Ministry of Defence (MOD) is working to achieve water neutrality by abstracting ground water from bore holes. MOD has also implemented a policy requirement that all new build and major refurbishment projects in water stressed areas must incorporate rainwater or grey water systems to reduce water abstraction demand, unless there are overriding technical or operational reasons.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what was the average time taken for an environmental permit application to be processed in each year from 2015 to 2023 inclusive.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The average time taken to process applications in each year between 2015 and 2023 is shown below. This covers applications across Water Abstraction, Discharge to Water, Waste and Industrial Processes. There is a widely varying level of complexity in the applications determined which means drawing statistical comparisons across such a wide range doesn’t accurately account for the different requirements.
It is important to note that many application types have seen legislative change and increases in complexity during this time period, making year on year comparison difficult. The Environment Agency have seen a reduction in application quality during this time, requiring additional processing by their permitting department. Backlogs were built up during 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic which the Environment Agency have now largely recovered and they expect 2023/24 to see a reduction in average times.
Year Average of KPI3 (Days):
2015 - 41
2016 - 53
2017 - 64
2018 - 60
2019 - 72
2020 - 89
2021 - 85
2022 - 106
2023 - 107
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent discussions she has had with the Environment Agency on helping to ensure that the process for abstraction licences is adaptable and flexible.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency has recently invested in significant additional resources to help improve the determination timescales associated with abstraction licence applications and to reduce the number of applications in the queue. Improvements are already being seen. The Environment Agency is also prioritising licence applications and Habitats Risk Assessments which are associated with Rural Payments Agency grants for farm storage reservoirs and has appointed a specialist to help support these applications through the process.
The Environment Agency and Defra are working closely with the sector to help farmers refill storage reservoirs and recover from the 2022 drought, and to improve the sector’s resilience to future drought. This includes improvements to water resources planning, investment in infrastructure, greater collaboration across all sectors of use, and more rapid communications to improve access to water when it is available.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she bring forward legislative proposals to help ensure that a food risk assessment is made when changes to abstraction licences or restrictions are implemented to ensure that due regard is given to any potential impact on food security.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency has a duty to take into account the costs and benefits of its actions. The Environment Agency applies this duty, for example, when considering the need for irrigation restrictions. There is recognition of the devastating impacts that a total ban may have on the yield and quality of crops, so where restrictions are absolutely necessary the Environment Agency looks to introduce restrictions on a voluntary basis first, followed by partial restrictions (e.g., abstraction every other day, or night time only) and then total bans as a last resort. During the drought of 2022, the Environment Agency avoided the need for total irrigation bans by using this approach.
Asked by: Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Enfield, Southgate)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of water abstraction plans by Thames Water at Teddington.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Teddington Direct River Abstraction is a water recycling scheme considered in Thames Water’s draft Water Resources Management Plan 2024 (dWRMP24) and Water Resources South East’s (WRSE) Regional Plan as a supply option for 2030/31.
The Environment Agency has scrutinised WRSE’s plan and has responded to Thames Water’s dWRMP24. Any scheme developed will have to meet environmental requirements, and where possible enhancements. The scheme will need environmental permits that the Environment Agency regulate, and planning consents where the Environment Agency is a statutory consultee.
The scheme is being developed through the ‘Regulators Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Delivery’ (RAPID) gated process and has undergone environmental assessment largely meeting the Regulators’ expectations for Gate 2. Risks have been identified in the Gate 2 submission. There is a risk to scheme feasibility if environmental impacts cannot be mitigated. The Environment Agency has asked Thames Water to undertake further investigations and studies to address these risks by 31 August 2023.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many applications for limited extended validity were made to the Environment Agency in each year since 2016; and how many were yet to be processed by year of application as of 25 March 2023.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
No application is necessary for Limited Extended Validity (LEV) and the Environment Agency does not grant LEV. By operation of the law, LEV is automatic when a time-limited water abstraction licence is due to expire, an application to renew has been made at least three months before the expiry, and the Environment Agency cannot complete the determination before the expiry date. LEV allows the licence holder to continue to abstract water under the terms of the original licence until the renewal application is determined.
As of 25 March 2023, there were 122 Water Resources licences subject to ongoing time-limited licence renewal applications where LEV has been applied. Please note that this information is not routinely retained within the Environment Agency’s data systems and therefore this figure should be used with a degree of caution. The Environment Agency does not retain a record of applications where LEV has been applied each year once renewal applications have been determined. The number of licences subject to ongoing LEV varies continuously throughout the annual renewals cycle as the Environment Agency grant/refuse applications, particularly at this stage of the cycle as the majority of time limited licences have an end date of 31 March. For those applications that the Environment Agency has not determined, LEV becomes effective once the licence expires.
Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent steps she has taken to ensure that (a) publicly and (b) privately owned water and sewerage companies fulfil the duty to provide details of water abstraction and sewerage discharges to the public upon request; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
All data held by the Environment Agency on water abstractions, sewage treatment effluents or sewage related discharges is Environmental Information and available on request or in some cases is published on GOV.UK.
Water and sewerage companies have published Event and Duration Monitoring (EDM) data relating to sewage discharges annually since 2020 that can be found here. The 2022 data will be published at the end of March 2023.
Defra also publish a summary of water abstraction statistics. The most recent update was published in July 2022, including data up until 2018: Water abstraction statistics: England, 2000 to 2018 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).