Anti-pollution legislation to threaten water bosses with jail | EUROtoday

Water firm bosses may very well be banned from receiving bonuses and even despatched to jail underneath new authorities laws to fight air pollution.

The proposed legal guidelines will apply in England and Wales and provides elevated powers to regulators to sort out firms who pollute and make it simpler for them to be fined.

Environment Secretary Steve Reed mentioned the measures would “end the disgraceful behaviour of water companies and their bosses”.

But some campaigners for cleaner waters have criticised the brand new laws, with one telling BBC News it amounted solely to “window dressing”.

Water firms have been extensively criticised for giving multi-million pound pay packages to their executives whereas persevering with to recurrently spill sewage into lakes, rivers and the ocean.

The new Water (Special Measures) Bill will see harsher penalties for law-breaking, with jail sentences of as much as two years for executives who fail to cooperate or hinder investigators.

The burden of proof in civil instances might be lowered in order that the Environment Agency can extra simply convey ahead prison fees towards bosses.

Regulators may also be given the ability to cease bonus funds to water bosses in the event that they fail to fulfill excessive requirements to guard the setting, their customers and their firm’s funds.

“Banning the payment of bonuses for bosses who are overseeing failure and making them personally criminally liable if they refuse to comply with investigations will focus them on cleaning up our rivers not lining their pockets,“ Mr Reed said.

Some campaigners for cleaner waters criticised the new legislation.

Many pointed out that there is already widespread rule-breaking in the water industry and said the real issue was a failure of the water regulator, Ofwat, and the Environment Agency to enforce them properly.

Earlier this year a BBC investigation revealed that in 2022 every major English water company reported discharges of raw sewage when the weather was dry – a practice which is potentially illegal.

“If the secretary of state believes that the few one-off actions announced today, such as curtailing bosses’ bonuses however appealing they may sound are going to fix the underlying causes of our poisoned waterways, then he needs to think again,” Charles Watson of River Action mentioned.

The Conservatives mentioned the proposed measures had been “simply playing politics”.

“Labour are attempting to pass off measures implemented under the Conservatives – like banning bonuses for water company bosses whose companies who commit serious breaches – as their own,” mentioned shadow setting minister Robbie Moore.

Decades of under-investment has left sewage infrastructure steadily unable to deal with the quantity of rainwater and sewage, which then results in spilling.

Last 12 months there was 3.6m hours of spills in England. Only 14% of England’s rivers are assessed to have good ecological standing.

Responding to the brand new laws a spokesman for Water UK, which represents the water firms, mentioned it agreed the system was “not working”.

They referred to as on the regulator Ofwat to again its £105bn five-year funding plan for water and sewage infrastructure.

That will in the end need to be paid for by way of increased buyer payments, and negotiations are persevering with with Ofwat as to how a lot firms might be allowed to place them up by.

The new laws may also give the regulators the ability to get better prices from water firms for enforcement motion.

Ofwat might be required to set guidelines that guarantee firms appoint administrators and chief executives, and permit them to stay in put up, solely once they meet the very best requirements of “fitness and propriety”.

The authorities says there might be extra laws sooner or later that may make extra basic adjustments to the water business, pace up infrastructure upgrades, ship dependable water provide and higher sort out air pollution.