What are you doing to avoid having to use storm overflows?
Since privatisation we have cleaned up 10,000 miles of rivers and waterways whilst bathing waters have improved from a 20% pass rate in 1988 to a 97% pass rate in 2022. In 2022 we made four pledges (Link) as part of our rivers programme, committing to delivering £230 million in environmental improvements, leading to 115 miles of improved waterways across the North West – you can track progress here.
We are now accelerating further investment, bringing forward £1.5 billion over the next 24 months to help reduce the use of overflows and the number of times sewage is discharged into watercourses. This programme will focus on improving 154 storm overflows across North West - 15 of these at bathing water sites, a further four at overflows in and around Windermere, together with phosphorus removal schemes in the River Eden catchment in North Cumbria.
In addition to this accelerated funding, we aim to continue to focus on improvements in the natural environment - in particular storm overflows and river water quality - over the next 25 years. We’ve already committed to spending £3.1bn before the end of the decade, aiming to reduce storm overflows by 60% and further limiting all 2,200 storm overflows to a maximum of 10 spills per year by 2050 - the biggest spills reduction in England.