Environment Secretary opens Water Restoration Fund for
applications.
Up to £11 million from water company fines and penalties will be
reinvested to directly improve the water environment.
Fund will benefit local areas where water companies have been
issued with fines or penalties.
Up to £11 million in water
company fines and penalties will be reinvested back into a new
Water Restoration Fund (WRF), Environment Secretary Steve Barclay
announced today (Tuesday 9th
April).
All water company environmental
fines and penalties since April 2022 have been ringfenced to
directly improve the water environment.
The Water Restoration Fund will
offer grant funding on a competitive basis to support local
groups, farmers and landowners and community-led schemes,
bolstering their capacity and capabilities for on-the-ground
projects to improve the water environment. This could include
activities that improve biodiversity and community access to blue
and green spaces in areas where water companies have been issued
with fines or penalties.
This delivers on the
government's long-term plan, set out in its Plan for Water, to clean up
our waters and make polluters pay for the damage they cause to
the environment.
The launch of the Fund follows
significant action taken in recent months to hold water companies
to account, including a ban on bonuses for water
company executives where firms have committed serious criminal
breaches, subject to Ofwat consultation, and plans to quadruple
the Environment Agency's regulatory capacity, enabling
them to carry out 4,000 water company inspections by the end of
this financial year.
Funding for the Water
Restoration Fund comes exclusively from water company fines and
penalties. These penalties and fines are additional to any
reparations that water companies make when they have breached
environmental regulations.
Environment Secretary
Steve Barclay said:
“I know how important our
precious waterways are to local communities and to nature, which
is why we're taking tough action to ensure our regulators are
well-equipped to hold those who pollute them to
account.
“Through the Water Restoration
Fund, I will be making sure that money from fines and penalties –
taken from water company profits only – is channelled directly
back into our waterways.
“Community-led projects are
vital to improving and maintaining water quality across the
country, and this fund will help build on that
success.”
Natural England's chief
executive Marian Spain:
“Natural England welcomes the
creation of Defra's Water Restoration Fund, using the money from
water company fines and penalties to improve water and wetlands
for nature and people, and looks forward to supporting Defra to
make good use of the funds now available.
“The fund is great opportunity
for landowners, communities and nature bodies to help make a real
difference to the condition of our Sites of Special Scientific
Interest and to restore natural processes in catchments to
provide the nature and health benefits that society needs from
water.”
The fund will be open to a
range of organisations in England, including farmers and
landowners, eNGOs, Local Authorities, catchment partnerships,
National Parks and National Landscapes.
The £11 million in fines and
penalties collected will be allocated for water improvements in
the water company areas on which they were accrued
in:
- Anglian Water: £3,085,000
- South West Water: £2,150,000
- Thames Water: £3,334,000
- United Utilities: £800,000
- Yorkshire Water: £1,600,750
Applicants will have an
eight-week window to apply from today, with grant awards expected
to be issued from late July. For further details, please refer to
our application
guidance.
Further improvements recently
delivered to the water environment include:
- Requiring companies to monitor 100% of storm
overflows in England - providing a complete
picture of when and where sewage spills
happen.
- Removing the cap on civil penalties for
water companies and broadening their scope so swifter action
can be taken against those who pollute our
waterways.
- Requiring the largest infrastructure
programme in water company history - £60 billion
over 25 years – to revamp ageing assets and reduce the number
of sewage spills by hundreds of thousands every
year.
- Increasing protections for coastal and estuarine
waters by expanding the Storm Overflow Discharge
Reduction Plan, prioritising bathing waters, sites of special
scientific interest and shellfish waters.
- Providing £10 million in support for farmers to store more
water on their land through the Water Management Grants to
support food production and improve water
security.
- Speeding up the process of building key water supply
infrastructure, including more reservoirs and water transfer
schemes.
