Legal Update – February

Our poorly regulated water industry continues to dominate headlines, and rightly so. In response, our legal team are working to keep environmental protection high up on the political agenda as we fight to protect and restore wild fish populations. Here is just some of what they’ve been up to and what’s to come.

Sewage spotlight: Buckingham

Over Christmas, we were preparing to take Buckinghamshire Council to court because we said they had unlawfully loosened up a planning condition for 170 new homes near Maids Moreton. Just to the southeast of the site lies the Great Ouse. One of the longest rivers in England, its catchment holds dozens of protected sites including Ramsars, SPAs, SACs and SSSIs. Despite these protections, the river is failing its Water Framework Directive (WFD) targets and is classified as “poor”.

Just south of the river, the Buckingham Sewage Treatment Works (STW) takes the wastewater from the nearby settlements and discharges the resulting effluent into the river.

We decided not to proceed with a judicial review because Anglian Water had suggested it would be upgrading its sewage works at Buckingham, which would mean it could handle all the excess sewage from the site.

Fast forward to 2025, and Ofwat has now confirmed to us that it has not approved investment for the Buckingham STW. It turns out that the STW is struggling with compliance with the existing volume of sewage, let alone increased demand from future growth influxes from housing.

Despite warnings, the council has now resolved to sign off on some of the conditions in the planning permission, including ones relating to sewage.

We are preparing another “Pre-action” legal letter and will consider taking the case to trial if the council does not agree to a “quashing” order.

The Environment Agencies consultation on reporting and managing water company “incidents”

The Environment Agency (EA) has published its draft amended “Guidance – Reporting, recording and managing incidents involving water company assets”. This is effectively a document which provides guidance for the EA and water companies on self-reporting their own sewage related incidents. The disappointing news is that after our warnings about “Operator Self Monitoring” (based on previous misreporting by water companies), the EA’s guidance simply accepts the status quo. We are preparing a response to the consultation.

Planning and capacity

This month, we have been concentrating on the sewage and abstraction pressures from housing and development. Our focus is timely as the Water Commission has today released a call for public feedback on how we fix the water industry and the government intends to open a consultation on planning reform.

We are preparing to launch our campaign which links planning development with water resource capacity. The key is that if there isn’t capacity, then there shouldn’t be development. Watch this space for more on this campaign…