Speeches by Tufnell.

“You have touched on the environmental performance being one of your key metrics and of real importance to Welsh Water as a company. It has been reported that there has been an increasing amount of pollution incidents over the last four years. In the last reporting year, there were seven serious pollution incidents. You…”

“I would like to just touch upon the sewer overflows and the spills per storm overflow. It gets quite complicated because the measurements that NRW provide are different in respect of the industry, so the figures are difficult to compare. You can correct me if these figures are wrong: I have 53.5 spills per storm overfl…”

“The problem I am struggling to understand is that you are regulated by Ofwat, and you asked Ofwat for a bespoke harm reduction. Every other water company that has come in here is also regulated by Ofwat. Ofwat did not allow you to have that because you did not provide compelling evidence as to how that would lead to ad…”

“I would like to go into some specific instances. The Cleddau Project, which operates in my constituency in Pembrokeshire, demonstrated that Picton in Haverfordwest is running at 80% capacity. That is 56,000 cubic metres—17 tankers a day—that should be going to a sewage treatment plant. Instead, it is going to a special…”

“I appreciate you saying it took you a while, but to be clear, it took you from July ’22 to February ’24. What steps are you taking to restore the environmental damage that has taken place?”

“Are you confident that you are not going to see an incident like this happen again?”

“You are confident this kind of incident will not happen again?”

“I am conscious of time, but there is reporting from the Wye and I want to detail some other specific instances. In the Wye in 2023, it was estimated that 23% of phosphorus in the Wye came from your own wastewater treatment works. To give you credit where credit is due, this is reporting from your organisation. In Octob…”

“I have talked about The Cleddau Project and mentioned the Windrush Against Sewage Pollution campaign and the work they have done. I was wondering whether you want to take the opportunity to commend them for their extensive continuing work in order to improve the water quality right across Wales.”

“I have two final questions. The first is about transparency. You said at the beginning to the Chair that transparency is incredibly important, but very recently in December ’24, it was reported that you were facing a large fine for not properly monitoring discharges from sewage and water treatment works. NRW—Natural Re…”

“You have touched on customer satisfaction and how important that is. I appreciate that you are comparing it with your competitors at a positive level, but the point that is quite concerning is the score is declining. Do you think that is in relation to your environmental performance and that it is affecting your custom…”

“There is one bit that I missed out in my questioning, so if you will forgive me. The Cardigan plant spill that we talked about, according to Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, the number of days is something like 1,146 days from the start of 2018 to 2023. If you could just cover this off, why was that allowed to go on …”

“Why did you not do that before it took place? Why was there not a more proactive approach?”

“But before 2018—before the spills took place—why was there not a more proactive approach in order to prevent that from happening in the first place?”

“No, that is fine. Thank you for indulging me, Chair.”

“You have touched on the environmental performance being one of your key metrics and of real importance to Welsh Water as a company. It has been reported that there has been an increasing amount of pollution incidents over the last four years. In the last reporting year, there were seven serious pollution incidents. You…”

“I would like to just touch upon the sewer overflows and the spills per storm overflow. It gets quite complicated because the measurements that NRW provide are different in respect of the industry, so the figures are difficult to compare. You can correct me if these figures are wrong: I have 53.5 spills per storm overfl…”

“The problem I am struggling to understand is that you are regulated by Ofwat, and you asked Ofwat for a bespoke harm reduction. Every other water company that has come in here is also regulated by Ofwat. Ofwat did not allow you to have that because you did not provide compelling evidence as to how that would lead to ad…”

“I would like to go into some specific instances. The Cleddau Project, which operates in my constituency in Pembrokeshire, demonstrated that Picton in Haverfordwest is running at 80% capacity. That is 56,000 cubic metres—17 tankers a day—that should be going to a sewage treatment plant. Instead, it is going to a special…”

“I appreciate you saying it took you a while, but to be clear, it took you from July ’22 to February ’24. What steps are you taking to restore the environmental damage that has taken place?”