The North East public has “every right to be angry” about water bill increases amid a national sewage dumping scandal, a minister has said.
Northumbrian Water asked regulators last month to let it charge customers even more than it was already planning to.
Ofwat had previously announced that it would allow the firm to increase bills in the region by 19% over the next five years, equivalent to around £79 a year on average.
But Northumbrian Water has since appealed to the Competition and Markets Authority, seeking a further 2 to 3% rise that it says would allow it to spend a further £160 million on maintaining its network.
Bosses say that the company, which reported a £6.1 million pre-tax profit last year and paid £108 million in dividends to its owners, will deliver the “most ambitious” investment plan in its history – including upgrades to pipelines, treatment works and pumping stations to help cut pollution levels.
Labour’s water minister, Emma Hardy, was at the company’s Howdon sewage treatment works on Wednesday to see a ‘smart sewer’ project which aims to reduce the amount of spills from storm overflows.
She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that she sympathised with customers left angered by the prospect of being forced to pay more at a time when privately-owned water companies have come under severe criticism for the amount of raw sewage spilling into rivers, lakes, and seas.
According to data from The Rivers Trust, 46,492 spills were counted across the Northumbrian Water area in 2023 – totalling a duration of 280,029 hours, which was more than double 2022’s figure.
Ms Hardy, the MP for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice, said that Labour had already introduced new rules ringfencing money for infrastructure improvements and giving Ofwat the power to ban bonus payments to water bosses if companies fail to meet environmental standards.
But campaigners have demanded stronger action to be taken, with some calling for a nationalisation of the sector as public anger has mounted.
Ms Hardy said: “The public have every right to be angry about bill increases, I completely sympathise and support them on that. What we have done as a Government is say that those bill increases can only be used for infrastructure improvements – they can’t go off to shareholders, they can’t be used for bonus payments. This bill increase has to be used on infrastructure improvements, which is what we need.
“Things like the smart sewers which we saw today are something tangible which will be using money but will reduce pollution going out into our areas of beauty. That is what the money is for.
“I can’t go back to before we got into Government and change what happened in the past, change how companies behaved or the decisions they made. What I can say under this Government is that bill increases are for infrastructure improvement. We have a bonus ban that we have already introduced through our Water (Special Measures) Act and we are introducing criminal liability so that water companies are held to account if there is any evidence of wrongdoing. But we do need to invest in our infrastructure. If we don’t, then in some areas of the country we are not going to have enough water to build the homes we need.
“Here in Northumbria, if we don’t invest in the water we will continue to see unacceptable levels of pollution.”
The minister also urged any struggling households to apply for Northumbrian Water’s “really generous” discounts for people on low income or pension credit, which can reduce bills by up to 40%.
