Local MP Henry Tufnell has renewed calls for urgent action from Welsh Water to improve water quality across Pembrokeshire's rivers, beaches, and surrounding oceans, following concerns about pollution incidents and poor environmental performance.
The MP for Mid and South Pembrokeshire questioned Dŵr Cymru/Welsh Water chief executive Peter Perry, during an environment committee session at UK Parliament this week, about his earnings.
In 2021, Mr Perry received a total of £892,000 in remuneration, which included salary, benefits, pension, variable pay, and incentives.
As a member of the ‘environment, food and rural affairs select committee’ - Tufnell probed Mr Perry regarding the company’s poor environmental performance, stating: "In 2021, Peter, your total remuneration was £892,000 and last year you took a bonus of £91,000.
"I wonder whether, if you take into consideration what we've talked about with water security, environmental performance, water quality with the public health element to it, do you think level of pay is justified and that's in alignment with your not-for-profit model?"
In response, Mr Perry clarified the terminology used by the company, explaining that they don’t ue the term 'bonus' - but have the term 'variable pay' and variable pay puts at risk a potential earnings based on performance.
He explained that in the year he received what was referred to as a £91,000 bonus, it represented only 25% of the maximum he could have earned, as 100% of variable pay was entirely based on performance.
Recent reports revealed seven serious pollution incidents in the last reporting year, with Welsh Water receiving a concerning two-out-of-four-star rating from Natural Resources Wales — one of its worst assessments to date.
"I challenged Welsh Water directly on this,” Tufnell stated after the discussions.
“In the Haverfordwest area, for example, The Cleddau Project found that a sewage system operating at 80% capacity resulted in 56,000m³ of waste — equivalent to 17 tankers a day — flowing into a protected conservation area. That’s simply unacceptable.
“I asked Welsh Water’s leadership whether they would apologise to the residents of Haverfordwest, and they agreed."
The MP said that he recently took to the sea at White Sands Beach in St David’s, and highlighted the importance of monitoring local water conditions.
Using the Surfers Against Sewage app, he confirmed that water quality at White Sands and across much of the constituency was safe, marked by reassuring green ticks.
However, Tufnell warned that not all areas were in the clear.
"Newport and Fishguard are facing ongoing issues, and it’s absolutely critical that we keep the pressure on Welsh Water to deliver better outcomes for our environment and our communities," he continued.
Tufnell said that he remains committed to keeping the pressure on Welsh Water to ensure tangible improvements.
The MP for Mid and South Pembrokeshire questioned Dŵr Cymru/Welsh Water chief executive Peter Perry, during an environment committee session at UK Parliament this week, about his earnings.
In 2021, Mr Perry received a total of £892,000 in remuneration, which included salary, benefits, pension, variable pay, and incentives.
As a member of the ‘environment, food and rural affairs select committee’ - Tufnell probed Mr Perry regarding the company’s poor environmental performance, stating: "In 2021, Peter, your total remuneration was £892,000 and last year you took a bonus of £91,000.
"I wonder whether, if you take into consideration what we've talked about with water security, environmental performance, water quality with the public health element to it, do you think level of pay is justified and that's in alignment with your not-for-profit model?"
In response, Mr Perry clarified the terminology used by the company, explaining that they don’t ue the term 'bonus' - but have the term 'variable pay' and variable pay puts at risk a potential earnings based on performance.
He explained that in the year he received what was referred to as a £91,000 bonus, it represented only 25% of the maximum he could have earned, as 100% of variable pay was entirely based on performance.
Recent reports revealed seven serious pollution incidents in the last reporting year, with Welsh Water receiving a concerning two-out-of-four-star rating from Natural Resources Wales — one of its worst assessments to date.
"I challenged Welsh Water directly on this,” Tufnell stated after the discussions.
“In the Haverfordwest area, for example, The Cleddau Project found that a sewage system operating at 80% capacity resulted in 56,000m³ of waste — equivalent to 17 tankers a day — flowing into a protected conservation area. That’s simply unacceptable.
“I asked Welsh Water’s leadership whether they would apologise to the residents of Haverfordwest, and they agreed."
The MP said that he recently took to the sea at White Sands Beach in St David’s, and highlighted the importance of monitoring local water conditions.
Using the Surfers Against Sewage app, he confirmed that water quality at White Sands and across much of the constituency was safe, marked by reassuring green ticks.
However, Tufnell warned that not all areas were in the clear.
"Newport and Fishguard are facing ongoing issues, and it’s absolutely critical that we keep the pressure on Welsh Water to deliver better outcomes for our environment and our communities," he continued.
Tufnell said that he remains committed to keeping the pressure on Welsh Water to ensure tangible improvements.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you Peter. I'm going to look first of all at the company's environmental
00:04performance. Henry, can I ask you to lead the question here? Thank you Chair. So
00:08we've sort of touched about the environmental performance being
00:12one of your key metrics and real importance to Welsh Water as a
00:17company. It's been reported that there's an increasing amount of pollution
00:22incidents over the last four years. I think in the last reporting year there
00:26were seven serious pollution events, incidents, and you were rated by NRW
00:31with two out of four stars and they said it's one of the worst performance to
00:37date. So what's going wrong and why is there such a difference between what you
00:41just set out there and the reality on the on the ground? Yeah thank you. Well
00:46the first thing I'd say we're absolutely disappointed with our environmental
00:50performance. We're not comfortable at all where we are and we are doing something
00:53about it. In terms of the drop we were four star back in 2020 and we've dropped
00:57down to two star three, three star then to two. The way that assessment is
01:03pulled together it allows a certain number of pollution incidents. This is
01:09the environmental performance assessment and in the the last couple of years if
01:14you look at the serious incidents category one and two, half of those are
01:19actually linked to a number of strategic assets which were due to
01:23replace in the the new amp period which starts in April. So where we've had
01:29serious incidents a very clear investment plan, those incidents to give
01:34you to bring this to life, about half of that seven, two or three of them
01:38certainly occurred on something we call the southeastern coastal main. This is a
01:43pumping sewer from Chepstow to Newport. That runs through a triple SI which I
01:48hope I'm sure you understand what that is. If we get a leak on that sewer it
01:53doesn't have to cause any environmental harm for it to be categorized as a
01:58serious incident and we haven't had any thankfully any fish kill incidents on
02:02that particular asset. So that's the one aspect of it so we've got investment to
02:07tackle that to pull pollutions back. The other element is the things we're doing
02:11operationally. We're now in the process of developing, we've got great
02:15monitor coverage, we've got all our overflows are monitored about just under
02:19a hundred percent. We're putting artificial intelligence into our
02:23wastewater network through something called storm harvester. That's being
02:27deployed at a significant rate at the moment so that we can actually get ahead
02:31of blockages and get ahead of pollution incidents. I'm not going to miss the
02:37opportunity if I may to ask parliamentarians to do all you can to
02:40ban plastic wet wipes because somewhere in the order of around 80% of our first
02:47time pollutions on the sewerage network are linked to wet wipes. So what I'd say
02:52in response to you is uncomfortable with where our performance is. A clear plan in
02:58respect of category one and two pollution incidents much of which is
03:01linked to future investment but in general in terms of wider less serious
03:06pollution incidents deploying operational strategies to get on top of
03:11that. I'd like to just touch upon, thank you for that answer, I'd like to touch
03:15upon the sewer overflows and the spills per storm overflow and it gets quite
03:24complicated because you're because in terms of the measurements that NRW
03:27provide a different in respect of the industry so the figures are different to
03:31compare but and you can correct me if these figures are wrong so I've
03:38got 53.5 spills per storm overflow which if you compare that to the sector
03:43average in England that's 33.1. I hate doing these comparisons with England but
03:47I think it helps for the present purposes. The average spill duration was
03:538.6 hours but the average in England was 7.8 and then if you if you look at
03:59all storm overflows in Wales and I appreciate there's there's difference in
04:04respect respect to that but 19% so 382 spilled between 100 and 299 times and
04:14less than 1% spilled more than 300 times but if you then compare that to the
04:17the average in respect of the industry there's it's 7.4 percent in terms of
04:23over a hundred so there's a quite a big discrepancy there and I was wondering
04:28whether you could explain that to the committee. Sure this is something we're
04:32disappointed in and not comfortable in but I do have to set out I think that
04:37the approach to storm overflows in Wales is very different to England and it's
04:41different in terms of improvement. You will hopefully know that river quality
04:46in Wales is if you measure it under the EU European wastewater directive is is
04:53better than it is in England so the focus that we have in Wales through
04:57government through our regulator in Natural Resources Wales is to focus on
05:01harm reduction not on spill numbers. If I if I give you if I try and explain our
05:06infrastructure we have 825 wastewater treatment works sewage works over 750 of
05:15those actually serve communities of less than a thousand population so when you
05:20talk of overflows in Wales these are very often less than four inch or 100
05:25millimeter diameter pipes and because of the sparsity of our population we
05:30have more CSOs per kilometer of sewer than probably any other water company or
05:35utility in England Wales if you wanted to compare it so I think tackling CSOs
05:42in Wales this is a pretty challenging one for us to explain to to our
05:46customers it's a challenging one for us to explain more generally but we are
05:51tackling harm and the reason we're tackling harm is that if we went for a
05:56spill number reduction per se we would not see the reduction with the
06:00improvement in ecological harm in rivers so as I say we are in a very different
06:07comparative space to what's happening in England it are and bait investment is a
06:12billion pounds the biggest CSO program we have ever seen and those improvements
06:18will be made to improve river quality and not reduce spills now if there was a
06:23government policy in Wales and a regulated policy to go after spill
06:28reduction then of course we would follow that but our amp 8 plan is focused on
06:34river quality improvement and because we've got that that advantage of rivers
06:39in Wales being of a higher quality we want to continue that and that that's
06:43been the sort of thoughtful process led by Welsh government that we followed
06:47with our investment but but it is a difficult one I absolutely get it trying
06:51to explain that our focus is on quality and not on spills very often spills
06:56occur when rivers are in full spate the other thing I'd mention in Wales about
07:01CSOs is two other things number one it rains a lot and I'm sure you'll
07:06have experienced that and we've got about a 60% combined drainage system in
07:12Wales which is one of the highest levels where you have foul water and surface
07:16water connected so hopefully that gives you the background to why the numbers
07:21are very different well the problem that I sort of am struggling to understand is
07:26that you're regulated by Ofwat and you've and you submitted to Ofwat you
07:31ask for a bespoke harm reduction so every other water company that's come in
07:35here is also regulated regulated by Ofwat but they didn't they didn't allow
07:40you to use that because they you didn't provide compelling evidence as to how
07:44that would lead to additional benefits for customers and the environment beyond
07:49the commons spills performance commitment yes so there's a sort of
07:54disconnect there isn't there between what you're setting out in respect of
07:57oh we're slightly different in terms of you know we sit within Wales we have a
08:00different structure there but the reality is is that you're regulated by
08:04Ofwat, Ofwat are asking you to reduce your spills and you seem to
08:10not be providing them with a coherent strategy about how to how to do that
08:14we agreed a spills number with Ofwat which is 30 by 2030 last year in 2024
08:20we're at 47 so we've got a challenging reduction we also have to look at
08:26reducing spills through operational means through our maintenance and that
08:30is an area that we need to approve so I think overarching we've got a Welsh
08:34government policy on harm reduction but we absolutely recognize that Ofwat
08:39are right in saying that we need a spills reduction target and moving from
08:4347 currently to 30 bearing in mind those other factors I've mentioned about the
08:49the infrastructure the weather the the inherited infrastructure we have that is
08:57quite a challenging number reduction from 47 to 30 over the next five years
09:02so I'd like to go into some specific instances so the Cleddau project which
09:10operates in my constituency in Pembrokeshire demonstrated that at
09:14Picton in half a West they're running 80% capacity so that's 56,000 cubic
09:21meters so that's 17 tankers a day which should be going to a sewage treatment
09:26plant we're instead going to a special conservation area in in the Cleddau
09:34would you like to apologize to the residents of half a West for this
09:39happening absolutely and it won't be the first time we've apologized either we've
09:44done that locally with with river groups in that that part of Pembrokeshire can I
09:50say with Picton which is a sewage pumping station again coming back to the
09:55culture of the organization this was an issue that we discovered we self-reported
10:00that to Natural Resources Wales we agreed a program a timescale to to get
10:06that fixed and we did that in line or just ahead of the program we agree but
10:11absolutely I think the the whole idea of the sewerage network and I think this
10:16this is not just the case for Dwr Cymru is that we are increasing the amount of
10:21monitoring we have on the system it traditionally there hasn't been
10:24mass coverage of our treatment works and and our pumping stations we're now
10:29working through that to get the best level of monitoring we can and wherever
10:33we discover something proactively we don't conceal that we openly reported
10:39and that's what we did at Picton but again I do apologize we are sorry for
10:43what happened in that instance it took us a while to fix it because the
10:46equipment we needed was specialists we had to import it we didn't fix that as
10:53quickly as we would have liked and again I'd re-emphasize the fact that we
10:57self-reported and that is the way we will always conduct ourselves in these
11:00these circumstances yeah I mean I appreciate you say it took you a while
11:05but to be clear it took you between July 22 and February 24 and what steps are
11:13you taking to restore the environmental damage that that's taken place well that
11:18pumping station is now working within its it's allowed permits so we've had no
11:24problem since we've we fixed it and on the clevai more generally we're
11:28investing 60 million pounds in the next investment period between 25 and 30 and
11:35in terms of the the most significant pollution issues on the clevai you'll
11:41probably know this it's nutrient pollution and by 2030 we will have
11:46reduced 90% of our phosphate load on the clevai as we are going to do on all
11:52the special conservation rivers across Wales are you confident that you're not
11:56going to see an incident like this happen again we've improved on
11:59monitoring we certainly at Picton we've dealt with that if I go through the
12:04other main assets in that area we've done the same so we are now putting much
12:09more emphasis on are we delivering what we call full pass-forward flow and that
12:16is now we weekly review for the for the organization so absolutely yes yes you're
12:22confident this this kind of incident won't happen again yeah with with 36,000
12:27kilometers of sewers 800 sewage works there will always be an emergency of
12:32some form but in terms of the things we can do proactively I don't think we've
12:37ever been in such a continuous improvement place as we are now so
12:40we'll do all we can barring let's call it an emergency that we can't foresee