The Environment Agency is pushing water companies to strengthen their efforts to improve the environment by tightening up the way it ranks and tracks their performance - from 2027, the EA’s annual Environmental Performance Assessment (EPA) reporting will look different.

In an Expert Focus article for WaterBriefing, Steven Roberts, Principle data scientist & Hydrologist, KISTERS discusses why water quality monitoring is the next frontier for water utilities.

Yorkshire Water has installed 232 free sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) into schools across the county to help prevent storm water discharges to watercourses by slowing the flow of rain entering the sewer network.

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) have announced that a record 81 criminal investigations into water companies have been launched in England over the last nine months since since the general election.

The Environment Agency has today published water company Event Duration Monitoring (EDM) Annual Return data for 2024 showing the frequency and duration of spills from storm overflows in England - total duration of monitored spill events in 2024 reached a record 3,614,428 hours.

Southern Water has introduced twin radar sensor heads, the most accurate reporting technology available, for closer monitoring on its storm overflows.

Yorkshire Water has completed a £500,000 storm overflow project in Hoylandswaine in south Yorkshire to reduce the number of discharges into Ellhirst Beck, improving water quality.

Yorkshire Water is set to begin phase two of its £1.3 million storm overflow project in Pool-in-Wharfedale, which will reduce the number and duration of discharges into the river Wharfe, improving both the environment and water quality in the river.

Southern Water is progressing work on more than £8 million of improvements to a Southampton wastewater treatment works which are helping to protect the River Itchen and its salmon population.

Yorkshire Water is three quarters of the way through a £27.8 million programme that will reduce the frequency and volume of storm overflow discharges at 41 of its wastewater treatment sites across the region.