Water companies have made progress towards meeting challenging targets set by the regulator to tackle issues such as leakage, but some companies’ environmental records are still not good enough, according to the latest annual assessment of water companies’ performance by Ofwat.

The Environment Agency says that its attendance at pollution incidents is reducing as funding to deal with them has been reduced. The EA is warning that more serious pollution incidents are caused by activities it does not regulate and that “resources are needed to fund this work because one day one could be catastrophic.”

Miller Homes Ltd has been fined £200,000 for polluting a Huddersfield watercourse for more than 1km, after an investigation by the Environment Agency. The firm was previously fined £100,000 in 2016 for a similar offence in 2013 at the same site.

Thames Water Utilities Ltd has been fined £4 million and ordered to pay the prosecution costs of £90,713 for discharging an estimated half a million litres of raw sewage into the Seacourt and Hinksey streams in Oxford on 24 and 25 July 2016.

Water sector regulator Ofwat has said that the current levels of storm overflow discharges into rivers cannot continue and must be tackled by the water sector.

The Government announced yesterday evening that the Environment Bill will be further strengthened with an amendment that will see a duty enshrined in law to ensure water companies secure a progressive reduction in the adverse impacts of discharges from storm overflows.

A high rate of regulatory performance in England is helping fight climate change impacts, but more must be done to secure a healthy environment, according to a new report released by the Environment Agency.

Listen to this afternoon's House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee hearing at 14.25pm when five water company CEOs will be questioned in person in the EAC's Water Quality inquiry. Click here to watch live.

Northumbrian Water has been fined more than half a million pounds for polluting a watercourse in a prosecution brought by the Environment Agency.

The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) will next week question the Chief Executives from five of the largest water and sewerage companies in England as part of its current inquiry on Water Quality in Rivers.