The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee is examining how well the water industry serves consumers and the environment, how innovation is encouraged, and whether current regulatory enforcement mechanisms are fit for purpose. The inquiry is also considering the potential benefits of regulatory divergence post-Brexit.
The public water sector is subject to significant environmental, economic public health and consumer protection regulation and the NFU believes that it is entirely appropriate for this level of regulatory scrutiny to be maintained.
We think that performance in the water industry has improved over the years in terms of levels of service provided to customers and, more recently, its commitment to improving long term resilience to water scarcity. Legislation has played an important role in driving performance.
The NFU has been pleased to engage with the water industry in the past few years as it has become more innovative in long term planning using a multi-sector approach (such as Water Resources East) and through identifying alternative approaches to ‘end of pipe solutions’ by working with farmers on catchment management initiatives.
Retail competition for non-household customers of water and wastewater services means that, since April 2017, farmers in England have been able to choose their retail supplier. The transition has not been wholly successful and we hope that the billing problems faced by NFU members – mostly resulting from poor/incorrect data transfer - are no more than ‘teething problems’.
Paul Hammett, NFU water specialist said:
‘While we hope that customer complaints arising from the new retail market will prove to be short-lived, we are concerned that further market reforms could lead to further fragmentation and disconnection between the customer and the wholesale supplier of a vital farm input.’
The NFU also believes that Defra’s recently published abstraction plan outlining a focus on catchment management gives the water industry the opportunity to find, in partnership with other sectors and actors, local solutions for locally identified problems.