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Flood and Water Management Bill

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. In some areas, water companies know about this and are ready to go, but in others they are not. There are two elements involved. We need the guidance so that the industry can be consulted, and we need to reassure the smaller drainage companies that currently do this work that it is intended that they will be consulted. In his letter to me dated 30 December 2009, the Minister seemed to indicate that the ongoing work had resulted in further consultation, but that the regulations are not yet in a position to be published. Let me repeat my question: when will the regulations be published, and what consultation has there been on them? If these regulations are not published prior to April-May, before the general election, will that delay the coming into effect of the transfer? New clauses 5, 6, 7 and 8 relate to the definition and ownership of sustainable drainage. Most importantly, new clause 7 would write into the Bill that there will be an end to the automatic right to connect. It is unacceptable that major new housing developments are being built because of an arbitrary target that the Government have introduced to have a major housing programme of X million houses by X date. As a result, residents of fairly recent developments may, through no fault of their own, be flooded by sewage because it has not been possible for the water and sewerage companies to attach conditions and take the opportunity at the planning stage to ensure that the infrastructure will accept new capacity from these major new housing developments. I believe that the polluter should pay. The residents of these houses in major new developments may be affected in the event of flooding, as we saw in the floods of 2007. As we know, Madam Deputy Speaker, if sewage is coming into your home, or the Minister's home, that is polluted water, which means that the homeowner or tenant cannot return for a substantial period because the public health hazard means that it will take longer to clean up. New clauses 7 and 8 say that there should be no automatic right to connect. The water company should be a statutory consultee on the same legal basis that has been established with the Environment Agency, which now sets conditions. Those conditions are sometimes overlooked or overruled, and then we go on to experience flooding. In this regard, we want water companies to be treated on exactly the same basis as the Environment Agency. I would argue that new clauses 7 and 8 would go to the heart of implementing Pitt's recommendation 10 in ensuring that there is no automatic right to connect. It is unacceptable that existing customers of water companies in possibly quite recent developments should be asked to pay for any potential incapacity problems if sewage backs up and then overflows into their homes. The polluter should pay. It should be open to the water companies to say to the SUDS-approving body at the time when the planning application is sought that they can accept such conditions to reduce any potential floods. I think that the new clauses speak for themselves. The Local Government Association has expressed concern about what the layers of approving bodies should be. As the Minister is aware, if district councils are not included, that will have perverse consequences. We try to resolve that issue in this little group of amendments. District councils, which are usually the planning authorities in two-tier areas, should have responsibility for the approving of SUDS relating to major new housing developments. County councils should have responsibility, as at present, for SUDS relating to the overflow from highway spillages. It is important to have clarification in that regard. I hope that the Minister will accept, and take the opportunity to say so, that he is over-egging the amount that local authorities will save in the transfer of private sewers. Those figures are out of date. Private sewers are in private hands—they are not the responsibility of local authorities. We are also worried that because owners of private drains and sewers know that they will be transferred in 2011, there is a strong probability that their maintenance will lapse, so that when water and sewerage companies take over their ownership and maintenance there will be serious problems as regards the state of those assets, thereby imposing an unnecessary burden on taxpayers. In passing, I ask the Minister to clarify the implications of Government amendments 53 to 56 for the IDBs and others affected and whether, in his view, there will be any financial consequences. Amendment 13 is, I hope, fairly clear. In our view, any development should be sustainable. If a major housing development causes an overflow and spillage from the existing sewerage system, it is clearly not sustainable because it is leading to pollution and unacceptable flooding. It cannot be sustainable if the capacity is simply not there. If amendment 13 and our other amendments in this group are accepted, we will comply with Pitt's recommendation 10. The amendments cover universal build standards; the facilitation of access to and the operation of transferred sewage disposal works, pumping stations and outfalls; and the exemption from mapping of transferred sewers. Although the Bill provides that all new sewers and drains must be built to universal build standards, it allows the connection of new sewers and drains to the public sewerage network even if those standards have not been complied with. That cannot have been the Government's intention. Our amendments therefore suggest that adoption agreements under section 104 of the Water Industry Act 1991 should be supported by a non-performance guarantee. They further propose making it clear that adoption agreements must encompass protection of the existing public sewerage system from overloading, and thus from being a source of cost and pollution. The approval of new sewers and drains by sewerage undertakers would overlap with the functions of local authority building inspectors, so the Building Act 1984 would need to be consequentially amended so that regulations could be made to accommodate that overlap. Our amendments would not make express provision for ending the automatic right of connection to public sewers, but they would give water companies enabling powers to control the right to connect and hence reduce the risk of overloaded sewers, flooding and pollution. Clause 42 will insert into the 1991 Act a new section 106B, which relates to the future of lateral drains and sewers, to which I referred earlier. We believe that the water and sewerage companies support the use of properly constructed and maintained SUDS, and that our consequential amendments are necessary to ensure that the existing system will not be overloaded by new developments. Any concerns about that problem would be satisfied by our amendments, particularly amendment 13, in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson). It sets out that adoption agreements should include provisions for protecting public sewer networks from becoming overloaded by the connection of new sewers, provisions for the reinforcement of the public sewer network if necessary, and provisions for water and sewerage companies to determine the point at which the new sewer is connected to the existing public sewer. The amendment would also require the agreements to include a requirement for a non-performance guarantee or security to be provided by the developer, so that it could be called upon should they fail to complete the work or to construct a sewer to the required standards. That would allow a water and sewerage company to complete or rectify the works at no cost to itself. The Minister might say that the Government are unable to accept the amendments because they will not enable them to meet their housing targets and because house builders will respond unfavourably. I believe that he is wrong in that regard and that if he follows the logic of our arguments, he will see that it is important to end the automatic right to connect and to recognise that water and sewerage companies should have the same legal basis as the Environment Agency. That is important not necessarily so that they can block major new developments from proceeding, but so that they can attach conditions to ensure that if there is any pollution, the developer will pass the potential costs on to the new householders. Amendment 19, to schedule 3, effectively sets that out. As I have said, it is unacceptable that through no fault of their own, existing customers of a water company should be asked to pay. Amendment 15 would make good the building regulations in that regard. The amendments go to the heart of the Bill. I hope that the Minister will agree that schedule 3, which deals with what will happen once a potential new drainage system or SUDS has been approved by the SUDS approval body, should be amended as we suggest so that the automatic right to connect is ended. The amendments would also allow the water and sewerage companies to become the owners of SUDS, which would be consistent with their statutory duty to drain effectively. Sustainable drainage already exists between household drains and the public sewer network, and both of those would be the responsibility of the sewerage undertakers. Ownership and operation of them by those undertakers would enable them to manage the whole network more effectively and efficiently. They have the skills and resources to carry out the work, and while the Bill was in Committee local authorities made it plain to us that they did not have that. Under the amendments, the undertakers would be funded to deliver their service efficiently through the price control mechanism. I hope that the Minister and the House will be minded to support us in our quest to have that important provision written into the Bill.