Truro and Falmouth MP challenges South West Water’s new boss

A list of sewage spill complaints from constituents and parish councils across the county is heading to South West Water’s new chief executive next week, after months of Jayne Kirkham raising individual cases and getting the same answer back: faulty monitors.

A meeting with a growing list of complaints

The MP for Truro and Falmouth is due to meet the incoming chief executive of Pennon and South West Water in Westminster on 10 September. In a letter setting out what she plans to raise, Jayne says the frequency of discharges and spills from combined sewage overflows (CSOs) into local seas and rivers is the biggest concern coming back from residents, including a recent spill and disruption in St Mawes harbour and repeated reports of discharges at Flushing and Penryn outflows, both in dry and wet weather.

She writes that when she raised the Flushing and Penryn St Thomas reports with South West Water, the company told her both August incidents were “false activations” caused by the sensitivity of the monitoring equipment, and that the events would not be reported in the regulatory dataset sent to the Environment Agency, despite still showing on the company’s own overflow map. She notes that a South West Water team is due at the Penryn site to look at improving data quality, and that work is under way on the monitoring system at Pendennis Point.

Jayne says that uncertainty fuels what she calls the “justifiable concerns” of her constituents that the monitoring data isn’t robust, particularly given the South West Water area’s track record on discharges into rivers and bathing beaches. She wants to use the meeting to press for a plan to fix the false activation problem and give people more confidence in the figures.

Ahead of the meeting, she’s asking anyone with a specific spill or discharge issue to contact her directly at [email protected] so it can be added to the list.

The investment already landing in Falmouth

Jayne points to Falmouth as one of the first places getting a share of the infrastructure spending she says the government has secured. A new attenuation tank in the Gyllyngvase car park is expected to cut spills from that CSO by 95 per cent, and a further 16 CSOs across Falmouth are due to be fixed over the next 18 months. She acknowledges other areas of the county need similar investment, but says Falmouth’s work is now under way.

A different way to run water companies

Jayne also raises a bigger question sitting behind the local complaints: who should own water companies at all. She points to government legislation already passed criminalising illegal spills, banning bonus payouts and restricting self-monitoring, plus a Clean Water Bill expected in the autumn that would merge the current regulators into one body with stronger powers.

She says the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is also examining how the Special Administration Regime, the process used to take control of a failing water company, could work in practice, alongside other ownership models for the sector’s future. As a Co-operative Party MP, she says she’s particularly interested in mutual and cooperative ownership of water, adding that water “is not a commodity that ever should have been privatised.”

The idea has wider backing in Westminster. A recent Guardian report set out proposals from Labour MPs and regional mayors, including West Yorkshire’s Tracy Brabin and South Yorkshire’s Oliver Coppard, for turning failing water companies into not-for-profit cooperatives run by local people rather than selling them on to the highest bidder, an approach they say could bring public control without adding the debt to the government’s own balance sheet.

Jayne says she is in regular contact with South West Water about constituents’ concerns, and plans to publish a full report once the meeting with the new chief executive has taken place.