The Secretary of State frequently holds meetings with key stakeholders on water and river quality.

The Government has established a robust system of independent economic regulation for the purpose of ensuring the public receive value for money from their water companies. The Government’s Strategic Policy Statement for Ofwat makes it clear that we expect Ofwat to work with other regulators and wider stakeholders to ensure security of supply and protect and enhance the environment.

Through the Environment Act 2021, the Government has given Ofwat improved powers to modify water company licenses without consent. On Monday 20 March 2023, Ofwat announced a new measure that will enable it to take enforcement action against water companies that do not link dividend payments to performance for both customers and the environment.

Where companies fail to meet their obligations, regulators have not hesitated to act. Ofwat’s annual performance assessment process, and the automatic penalties that apply to companies who underperform, represents an excellent example of strong economic and environmental regulation. In November 2022, Ofwat announced financial penalties of £132 million applying to 11 water companies, in response to underperformance in areas such as water supply interruptions, pollution incidents and internal sewer flooding. Money from Ofwat’s penalties will rightly be returned to customers through water bills in 2023-24.

Ofwat is currently undertaking the largest ever civil investigations into over two thousand wastewater treatment works.

The Government will continue to work with water sector regulators to hold water companies to account on poor performance and drive improvements which benefit customers and the environment.

Using powers in the landmark Environment Act, we will significantly improve transparency by requiring companies to make discharge data available in near real time to the public and monitor water quality upstream and downstream of their assets.

The Environment Agency has instructed water companies to install flow monitors at 2000 wastewater treatment works. These provide important data on the volume of treated final effluent discharges to the environment.

Earlier this month, the Government launched our consultation on Continuous Water Quality Monitoring and Event Duration Monitoring. This outlines the Government’s proposals to enhance the monitoring of storm overflow and final effluent discharges.

On drinking water quality there have been no recent discussions with local government. Local authorities are the regulators of private drinking water supplies and are responsible for identifying risks to the quality of drinking water with comprehensive monitoring programmes in place. In England, in 2021, private water supply compliance with the drinking water regulations was 96.9% which has been steadily improving (96.4% in 2020, 96.6% in 2019 and 95.2% in 2018).

The Chief Inspector of the Drinking Water Inspectorate publishes an annual report that provides an overview of the quality of private water in supplies in England. https://www.dwi.gov.uk/what-we-do/annual-report/.

Our Strategic Policy Statement (SPS) for Ofwat sets clear priorities for the water sector in England. This includes an expectation that Ofwat will challenge water companies to demonstrate how they will achieve zero serious pollution incidents by 2030 and we will continue to work with the regulator to ensure this happens.

The Environment Act 2021 gave Ofwat increased powers to modify water company licence conditions to improve water companies’ performance. This means Ofwat can modify company licenses.

Environment Agency guidance requires that storm overflows are designed so that the they do not spill in dry weather. It is the responsibility of water companies to comply with their permits and to avoid polluting the environment. If overflows operate outside of permit conditions, the Environment Agency has a range of enforcement powers, including criminal prosecution for which there can be unlimited fines.

(a) The Government has committed to banning the export of plastic waste to countries that are not members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). We will consult before the end of 2022 on options to deliver the ban.

(b) The Resources and Waste Strategy for England sets out the Government's plans to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste throughout the life of the 25 Year Environment Plan. For the most problematic plastics we are going faster - which is why we have committed to work towards all plastic packaging placed on the market being recyclable, reusable, or compostable by 2025. We have made significant progress, introducing one of the world's toughest bans on microbeads in rinse-off personal care products and significantly reducing the use of single-use carrier bags use with our 5p charge. In May we increased the charge to 10p and extended it to all retailers.

In general, we prefer to help people and companies make the right choice, rather than banning items outright. It is ultimately for businesses to decide what materials they use to supply products to customers. There may, however, be times when a ban is appropriate as part of a wider strategic approach. In October 2020, we introduced a restriction on the supply of plastic drinking straws, cotton buds and drink stirrers, and we are currently in the process of preparing a public consultation on banning the supply of single-use plastic plates, cutlery and expanded polystyrene drinks containers. We will continue to review the latest evidence on problematic products and/ or materials to take a systematic approach to reducing the use of unnecessary single-use plastic products.

We have included a number of measures in the Environment Bill to enable us to tackle plastics and plastic waste. These include measures to impose charges on single-use plastic items; introduce a Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers; and make producers cover the costs of collecting and managing plastic packaging waste. As well as this, the Bill gives us powers to provide consistent recycling services for household and businesses; ensure all packaging is labelled either 'recyclable' or 'not recyclable'; set requirements regarding design and material usage for products; and will allow us to better control the export of plastic waste.

The Forestry Commission produces statistics on new planting of woodland for the UK. These are Official Statistics produced to meet the standards of the Code of Practice for Statistics and can be found on the Forest Research web site together with background information at: https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/statistics/forestry-statistics/. The statistics are produced annually and show recorded new planting from administrative records and grant schemes with estimates for planting without grant aid. It is assumed nearly all the trees newly planted are whips with small stems or relatively small planting stock rather than larger trees.

The most recent statistics show there was 13,660 hectares of new planting (woodland creation) in the UK in 2019-20, of which 2,340 hectares were in England. At least a further 842 hectares have been reported as newly planted between 1 April 2020 and 31 December 2020 in England.

In addition, the Urban Tree Challenge Fund supports the planting of larger, ‘standard’, trees outside of woodlands in England. The Fund supported the planting of 7,630 standard trees in 2019-20 and 11,839 standard trees in 2020-21. Of these, 734 were planted in Croydon.

Grant schemes are demand led so it is not generally possible to state where the trees will be newly planted, although a range of sensitivities will prevent permission to plant being granted in some locations. We are aware of plans to plant a further 66 standards trees in 2021-22 in Croydon supported by the Urban Tree Challenge Fund. Additional planting will be dependent on future applications.

The maintenance of new trees and woodland is usually the responsibility of the grant agreement holder and the grant award includes a contribution to costs to ensure successful establishment of the newly planted trees.

The Minister who has forestry in his portfolio and is accountable for the programme is Lord Goldsmith.