Crispin Blunt

Conservative Party | Reigate

Floods

"Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink". That has certainly been the case for much of Sussex and Kent last week but sadly it has been the repeated experience of too many local people. It is bad enough to have your home and garden flooded once in a blue moon, but imagine what it would be like living with the threat of your home and garden flooding with sewage every time there is heavy rain. Regrettably, this is the reality for at least ten groups of local residents in the Reigate constituency.

No one is to be envied the misery of dealing with a flooded home. Carpets and furniture ruined, redecoration required, and this is after weeks of having space heaters imported into your house to help dry it out. Some people are now understandably at their wits end after their homes have been flooded three times in three months and four times in a year, all this following the trauma of inundation and repair and redecoration less than three years previously.

Their frustration is made worse by the failure of Thames Water to put the situation right. It ought to be so simple. Thames Water now has the duty to collect the sewage and waste water and drain it away from people's homes. The sewage system plainly can't cope so they should be able to undertake the capital work to give the sewers the capacity so that people's homes don't repeatedly flood. This work is the top priority of Thames customers. It would of course cost us all extra money on our water bills. But Thames say they can't undertake all the required investment. I have been trying to find out if their alibi stands up to scrutiny.

Sewage is a relatively new responsibility of the privatised water industry. Before privatisation, the local authority ran the sewers. Predictably, the investment in and maintenance of the sewerage system didn't feature strongly in the decades of public ownership and one of the benefits of privatisation was the enormous increase in capital investment in the water industry - at privatisation predicted to be £30 billion over 10 years.

However, ten years later, under a government that regards the privatised public utilities as 'fat cats', we are in danger of repeating the mistake of the past. The Government set up a regulator, OFWAT, which now tells the industry how much it can charge and where it must invest. This Government also wants OFWAT to deliver lower prices. Thames Water's pricing structure is controlled down to the number of houses they can help insulate from the threat of flooding. At the last price review, the previous regulator, Ian Byatt, told Thames there was to be no allowance at all in the price Thames could charge its customers for any work to prevent sewage flooding in any home in its area for the next two years. In the following three years the capital investment to protect 1,500 homes only was allowed for in their pricing strategy. Rather like Generals preparing today for the last war, the regulator was much more exercised over leaks in the supply than floods. As the South East receives yet another soaking, this priority is clearly out of date and inflexible.

I am now preparing to see the new water industry regulator, Philip Fletcher, to plead with him to change his policy. I don't want Thames Water to have an alibi when they say they can't invest to protect people's homes. But until we change the position that a quasi-political regulator instructs a water company how to manage its business we are left in this absurd situation: To force Thames Water to invest to protect homes now regularly flooded I have to ask OFWAT for an enforcement order. But it was OFWAT that told Thames there would be no money for this work for the next two years.

Somehow I am doubtful about the chances of getting an enforcement order. But with Parliament back next week, this member of the Environment Select Committee is not going to let this subject drop, even if it does stop raining!