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Charities that bid for a share of millions of pounds of water company fines to restore rivers in England polluted by sewage say the UK government will be guilty of an appalling breach of trust if the cash is diverted to Treasury coffers.
“I appreciate that the Labour government have inherited a mess, I am a Labour supporter myself, but I think this is a really deeply appalling decision for a Labour government given the promises they made, and it is a really worrying indication of where we are headed,” said Kathryn Soares, chief executive of the Nene Rivers Trust. Soares runs one of a number of groups waiting more than eight months for grants from an £11m fund made up of water company fines for pollution which Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, wants to divert to the Treasury, it was revealed on Sunday.
Since Labour came to power in July, charities and groups including veterans organisations that applied for some of the money, told the Guardian they had been “fobbed off” by the new Labour administration about their applications.
Soares said any suggestion that the Treasury was going to take the money would be a betrayal of promises made by Labour ministers.
“It doesn’t fill me with confidence as a small charity working on defending the environment in the context of climate change … to have a promise of help reneged upon is really heartbreaking.”
The water restoration fund was introduced by the Conservative government as a way of ensuring that polluting water companies paid for the environmental damage they had caused. From last spring, charities had applied for hundreds of thousands of pounds in their water company areas to restore damage to rivers. The scheme was oversubscribed.
Luke Bryant, assistant director of West Cumbria Rivers Trust, which has applied for two projects worth about £260,000, said the cost to his organisation to prepare the bids had been substantial: “This is a small amount of money for the Treasury. It has not been raised from taxpayers. It has come from fines for environmental damage water companies have caused, if money is not spent at local level on environmental restoration it would go against what people were led to believe was going to happen.”
Gilly Norton, the chief executive of Supporting Wounded Veterans, was waiting for news of two bids for £250,000 in total, from water company fines. Both projects were due to start this summer.
One of the schemes involved supporting six veterans who are suffering from PTSD to work on a restoration project on the River Dart in Devon. The veterans have already received training but the project, which was due to start in the summer, is on hold. “There is outrage that this money could now go to the Treasury. It is a total breach of trust by the government,” Norton said.
The increasing likelihood that the Treasury will take the £11m is raising concerns that hundreds of millions of pounds in new fines will also be diverted to the chancellor. Thames, Yorkshire and Northumbrian Water are being fined a total of £168m for a catalogue of failure relating to illegal sewage dumping; these fines are expected to be the first of many as discharges reach record levels.
Richard Benwell, the chief executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link, a coalition of environmental groups, said the government must respect the polluter pays principle and guarantee that future fines from river polluters would be ringfenced and paid directly to environmental restoration projects.
Martha Meek, director of the River Waveney Trust, which made a joint bid for a £144,000 grant with the Broads Trust, including funding for citizen science water quality testing, said: “Water company fines need to be directed to the catchments they relate to if we all stand a chance of securing a better future for our rivers. These funds must not be lost within government budgets.”
Stuart Singleton-White, head of campaigns at the Angling Trust, which has long argued for water company fines to go directly to environmental restoration, said allowing the Treasury to take the money would severely damage the government’s credibility.
“They made a manifesto commitment to clean up our rivers and seas and to hold water companies to account. We call on this Labour government not to make such a foolish decision. They must retain the fund, maintain the principle of the polluter pays, and ensure the money from fines is invested back into cleaning up our rivers and seas.”
The Treasury and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said in a joint comment that they were “continuing to work on how water company fines and penalties can be reinvested on water environment improvement”.
Defra refused to comment on whether future water company fines would be ringfenced for environmental restoration in areas where water companies have polluted rivers.
