Water companies 'must invest'

Crumbling sewers "expected to last 400 years"

Water company investment in pipes and sewers "may be insufficient" to ensure basic levels of service are met, a powerful committee of MPs warned on Tuesday.

Like the railways there could be sudden collapse of parts of the system

MPs' report

An all-party Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into the industry says that like the railways, it would be better to invest in infrastructure to prevent problems rather than react to them.

"Why wait for failure?" the MPs ask.

The report also says the director general of water regulator Ofwat should be legally bound to think of the future.

"In this way, he or she would be directly accountable for ensuring that pleasing customers now with lower prices does not mean that they will inevitably pay later-in higher bills, crumbling sewers and mains and loss of environmental amenity," says the report.

Roller coaster

The Committee also recommends that in future reviews the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions takes a long term view: "Roller-coaster prices confuse customers as to whether their valuable water resources are being carefully managed by the industry and how far they themselves should be bothering about water efficiency.

"As metering becomes more widespread, there will be an increasing price incentive to be water-efficient and clear pricing signals will be needed," says the report.

Chairman of the committee Tory MP John Horam said: "The current Ofwat method of assessing the level of investment water companies need to maintain our sewers and water pipes is seriously flawed.

"There has been intellectual neglect of this important problem.

"As a result current levels of investment may not be enough to ensure basic levels of service.

"Like the railways there could be sudden collapse of parts of the system. The current flooding will not have helped in this respect."

The MP added: "The water companies maintain that current renewal rates for sewers and pipes assume they would last 200-400 years.

"Ofwat argued these figures are nonsensical, but admitted that work was needed on the link between serviceability and spending."