Water Industry (Schemes for Adoption of Private Sewers) Regulations 2011

My Lords, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats I, too, am very happy to support the regulations, which are long overdue and welcome. The Explanatory Memorandum suggests that up to 50 per cent of properties are connected to private sewers in one form or other—which is a very large number. Under the regulations, 220,000 kilometres of private lateral drains and sewers will become the responsibility of the water and sewerage companies. At a guess, that is five times the circumference of the earth. I do not know how far it is to the moon, but 220,000 kilometres is a long distance. Therefore, this is not a trivial measure; it is extremely important and welcome. I share some of the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, about the impact of the costs. It is clear that they will impact mainly on property owners whose drains and sewers are already the responsibility of the water and sewerage companies under the 1936 Act. I would like a reassurance that the regulations being discussed today will solve the problem once and for all and that the problem will not start again after the regulations lapse in 2018. This must be a permanent solution. Future regulations that apply to new developments through the other Act, which we discussed before the election, will sort this out. We should not need to come back in 30 years’ time to try and solve another 30 years’ worth of problems. I think I know the answer, but it would be helpful to have that reassurance on the record. I am not sure—clearly I have missed something or perhaps I have not understood it—what the relationship is between the lapsing of the regulations at the end of June 2018 and the date of 2016 to which the Minister referred. Perhaps he will explain that. In particular, in the years between 2011 and 2016 or 2018, what is Government’s timetable for bringing in the schemes for each of the water and sewerage companies? Will they all come in at the same time or will they differ? How long will it take? Clearly, the quicker this can be done, the better. The other questions I want to ask are complicated but crucial. How will the new schemes apply to local properties? I have before me a plan of some properties which it would be nice to distribute to Members of the Grand Committee, but I am not allowed to do that, so I shall have to try to explain it. I apologise to the Minister for not giving him advance notice of these questions, but I have only just received this submission from an interested party. How will property boundaries be defined? If you buy a property which is served by an adopted highway and the lateral drain of what is at the moment a private sewer goes into the adopted highway, I presume that anything under the adopted highway will be assumed not to be within the property boundary, even though the deeds of that property may state that the property owner owns that part of the adopted highway. Because it is a highway maintainable at public expense, I assume that it would not be included. Therefore, if a private lateral drain goes straight out of a property on to a public highway and then joins the public sewer—the sewer that is already vested in the sewerage undertaker, say, along the middle of the road—the section of the lateral drain which is under the highway will now be vested in the water and sewerage company, whereas the section in the front garden will not. I assume that that is fairly straightforward. What is the position if the public highway is unadopted? A section of it is likely to belong to the property from which the drain comes out. It may well have a sewer along it which is the responsibility of the sewerage undertaker. Will sewers under unadopted highways now be the responsibility of the undertaker? I assume that they will, because they will be in the same position as private sewers which serve more than one property. What is the position in relation to the lateral drain coming out of the property? Will it still be the responsibility of the property owner until it plumbs the sewer, which may go down the centre of the road? I hope that what I am asking is clear. I think it is, but I am looking at a plan which makes it all very clear. This is a question about unadopted public highways—not their relationship to a sewer that serves more than one property, which will now be the responsibility of the undertaker—but what happens if it is a lateral drain serving only one house? I have been involved in these things at the local level in the past, and I am afraid that it lives with me. That is my basic question, because I think I understand how the rest of it will work at the local level. Having asked these technical questions, once again I would like to say that the regulations are extremely welcome in general. A lot of people around the country will be grateful that the Government are bringing them in.