Speeches by Buckley.

“You have gone away with a long to-do list.”

“Severn Trent is one of the highest performing companies in terms of environmental performance. How have you achieved this?”

“You are telling us that that is what it was for.”

“You say “compliant”, but four out of five were the worst-performing, and six required improvement. I know that you personally are a high performer. Are you satisfied with those results?”

“It is interesting, and I hear you say that you are proud of that record, but, at the same time, in 2023, which is the year that we are all looking at the data for, the River Severn was the most affected river in the country for untreated sewage spills. You were responsible for four out of five of the worst-performing s…”

“Would you say that the requirement to separate out the rainwater from the sewage means that we will end up with two different strategies about how rainwater could be put through meadows and how sewage can be better managed within grey? You can separate your grey and your green as soon as you have met the water company,…”

“If you had a single agency, that would be much simpler, wouldn’t it? A final question to you, Ms Burgess: any thoughts about any missing pieces there around resourcing or data that you think are needed to glue together what are currently fragmented responsibilities?”

“An excellent example that flows through Shrewsbury, yes.”

“That is an excellent conclusion: that Shrewsbury should be the best case example in the country. On that, I hand back to the Chair. Thank you—you can come back anytime.”

“I will just wrap up with one last question on your final section there. When you were talking about confidence is key and the schemes and the uncertainty, would you say that going back to having multiannual plans for the ELMs and the SFI might be a useful recommendation?”

“Quite recently they have been either one year or part-year. My question is whether the multiannual approach could be more helpful.”

“We will put that to one side. Moving back on to cross-sector collaboration, I know you have touched on this before, so don’t feel the need to repeat yourself, because we are against the clock. If I could start with Celia Davis: you mentioned some things, but how can local authorities, developers and landowners work mor…”

“Do you feel there is a need for data-sharing agreements, for example?”

“Credibility, accuracy?”

“I was supposed to ask you about any national examples, but you have both given some very good examples that I know you are going to write in about. If you have any international examples where that integration works very well, if you would not mind just popping that in the post to us as well, it helps us just not to re…”

“Now is a good time to give us an answer on that.”

“Are you saying they should also be measured on their work around surface water?”

“Could we ask you that, Celia Davis? You talked about the potential there to bring responsibilities potentially under one agency, which is a huge cost saving to a Government looking to saving some money. Is there something around data-sharing agreements that could help unlock that flow of data?”

“That is very helpful—so we have that clarity of purpose and single responsibility all in one place and hopefully, as you say, efficiency and devolution could be the example where we can make some savings. Could I ask you to write in with details of that Coastal Partnership East example? It is very helpful for us to see…”

“The scale of impact. That is helpful. Thank you. Sorry, Barry.”