I would like to go further in the debate and mention some of the powers that I think the water industry needs. I will focus my remarks around the Water Bill, and the fact that as with any industry, resources are scarce. It by no means passes the public by that their water bills go up, yet now and again we have hosepipe bans and so on because—let us be honest—of the mismanagement of our water resources. It does not help, however, when developers take no notice whatsoever of reports from water companies about the impact that their developments may have on the surrounding area. My constituency of Elmet and Rothwell is badly affected by such situations.
I recently had discussions with some people from Yorkshire Water about a small village in my constituency called Walton. It has a couple of houses that are badly affected by heavy rainfall and flooding. Yorkshire Water effectively said that a scheme to save two houses would cost £1.8 million—not in the region of something it could afford do—but that the problem came about in the first place because the original barn should never have been converted into a house. Messages to that effect were put forth at the time, but the conversion went ahead. The house was sold on in good faith and no matter what the situation in trying to alleviate the problem, Yorkshire Water is fairly certain that the water will always end up in that place. No one particularly noticed when it was full of cows, but when it is someone’s house, they tend to notice. That is a prime example.
My constituency is under unprecedented pressure for housing development. Figures from Leeds city council state that 12,500 houses could be built across my constituency. One place currently under great scrutiny is an area of Kippax called Sandgate drive. Some 260 houses are to be built at the back of some houses—by that I actually mean built on a hill behind those houses. Yorkshire Water has said that the water that will run
off would be unacceptable and that it would put huge pressure on the water courses to deal with that run-off of water—something the developers appear to be ignoring.
The Environment Agency deals with water that floods off land and is taken away in rivers, but it is down to the water companies to deal with the surface run-off and to get it to the rivers. The current development plans do not help water companies in the slightest, which means two things: first, that resources that should be used to repair the network so we can use our resources more efficiently get soaked up in flood alleviation solutions; and, secondly, that people’s bills rise constantly, with no further impact.
In an area of my constituency in the town of Wetherby, there is a planning application for 400 houses at the top of a hill. There have been problems with the water pressure in Wetherby. Yorkshire Water had to take measures on the Thorpe Arch trading estate to ensure it had proper pumping facilities to get the water to the top. That has been resolved, but only last week a resident told me that, last summer, on a very warm day, the water pressure dropped off when everybody in the area used the water. The developers have taken no notice of that, which means that Yorkshire Water must spend more of its resources dealing with the further drop in pressure, because it does not have the detonator to say, “That development cannot go ahead unless the developer is willing to spend huge amounts on the water infrastructure.”
A huge development—a dual carriageway ring road—is taking place to the east of Leeds. Back in the storms of 2007, my constituency, like the constituency of my hon. Friend for—