Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:35 pm on 11 January 2023.
Yes, thank you. Obviously, we want to get to the point where we don't have untreated sewage going into the rivers. We need an enormous amount of investment not just at the site that you mentioned there, but in sites right across Wales. We're currently in the negotiations with Ofwat and with the UK Government about the price review for water companies in Wales, and, of course, throughout the whole of the UK. That price review will determine the level of investment that they're able to put in, and the acceleration of the programme that we want to see. So, I, in return, would ask you to make sure that you also add your voice to ours from the Welsh Government, to Ofwat, to make sure that the price review includes the ability of a not-for-profit like Dŵr Cymru to be able to invest at the level it would like to invest, because, in the last price review, we had a real problem because the fact that it was not a company limited by shares was not taken into account by Ofwat, and that has had an effect on the ability to invest.
I absolutely have regular meetings with the water companies, and I absolutely ask them all the time to accelerate their plans, but we are absolutely in the hands of the price review. So, we all need to act together and add our voice to that to make sure that the price mechanism allows the investment that we want to see, and, indeed, not only the investment, but the acceleration of the investment that we'd all like to see.