Both employers and employees need to be aware that there are some big changes happening to the Minimum Wage from 1st of April 2024. The National Minimum Wage was brought into Statutory Force from 1999 and is updated annually on April Fools Day. This year’s amendments will see both the greatest increase and the reduction of the adult pay rate age bracket down from 23 years old to 21 Years old. This major shift is seen as an acknowledgement of the Cost of Living Crisis and In-Work Poverty. While it is right and fair, it will inevituably have a major impact on wage bills. The National Minimum Wage is designed to maintain fair pay for work of equal value in the workforce for all workers over 16. Failure to comply can result in significant fines, inclusion on a name-and-shame Government open list and tribunal claims. Any arrears have to be paid at the current rates, and the maximum fine award is £20,000 per employee.
Employer actions: Check which employees are aged 21 and 22 on 1st April Check which employees turn 21 after 1st April Write amend pay letters to inform of age and band change/pay amendment Amend pay from the next payment after the age/change requirement.
There is one further change. The Domestic Worker exemption (someone who lives with you and your family but has a paid role) is now abolished. So all individuals need to now be paid the National Minimum Wage. This took effect from 23rd January this year. Sally Cooper HR Consultant, Member of the CIPD
Good taste and goodwill are the perfect recipe for Okeford Fitzpaine’s exclusive, sold-out, monthly supper club. Rachael Rowe reports
Bryan Evans preparing an Okeford Supper Club dessert. All images: Rachael Rowe
When Bryan and Jacqui Evans moved to Okeford Fitzpaine they wanted to do something for the community. While some people opt for much-needed voluntary work in charity shops or joining the village fete committee, Jacqui and Bryan had something very different in mind – they started a supper club, and it was an instant hit.
Bryan and Jacqui Evans
‘We wanted to give something back to the village,’ said Jacqui. ‘We wondered whether a supper club would take off at all. But we sold 18 tickets for the first one and everyone enjoyed it. They were gobsmacked actually – it wasn’t what they were expecting at all. So we did more and they quickly sold out as well. People were knocking on the door giving us the money.’ Bryan has a background in catering and loves to cook: ‘I went to catering school and worked in restaurants for ten years. Then I moved to corporate catering work and then sales for 30 years. I have always done something relating to catering and hospitality. It’s a hobby too. ‘Menus are a bit of blue sky thinking. I look at what others are doing, what’s popular, or I set a theme. Then I work on what we can do. We use local suppliers where possible, such as Steeptonbill Farm Shop in Milton Abbas.’ Every month, for one night only, Okeford Fitzpaine village hall is transformed into a pop up restaurant, hosted by Bryan and Jacqui. A three-course, gourmet, set menu, with a vegetarian option, is offered for £17.50. Guests bring their own drinks and glasses. Booking is essential and Bryan warns that the tickets are sold almost as soon as the menu is published.
Assiette of Dorset lamb at the supper club
The something different club ‘People come expecting it to look like a village hall, says Jacqui. ‘It actually looks like a restaurant for the evening. Initially we planned to cater for 24 but it was so popular we added four – and then Bryan said we may as well do 35. It’s a lot of people to cater for. I do all the front of house and arranging the tables, and the waiting. Bryan is the chef, and we are helped by our friend Pat Thorne. Some people have been to almost every supper club evening we’ve run, and we see new faces too. What’s lovely is that we have met so many people, and it’s something different for the whole village.’ Each month, the couple creates a menu which is then emailed out to the supper club mailing list. If you like the look of the menu, you book and pay for your place. Sometimes there’s a themed event such as Burns Night, or there might be a focus on seasonal dishes like Dorset lamb. ‘People get to try flavours they wouldn’t usually get at home or as a standard pub meal,’ says Bryan. In March there was a twice-baked double cheese souffle, an assiette of lamb celebrating Dorset produce, and a dark chocolate mousse with a caramel tuile. On Burns Night, diners were treated to a whisky-cured gravlax – cured by Bryan. The presentation is first class and there’s a wonderfully relaxed atmosphere. It’s also an opportunity to bump into neighbours, and most people can walk off the calories on the way home! Jacqui added that the catering also considers allergies when cooking – as all caterers do – but for a personal reason. ‘I have a life-threatening nut allergy which was diagnosed in 2009. There aren’t many places I can go out to eat, so when we cook, we do it as though we are cooking for me. Since we opened the supper club I’ve met three other people with a similarly serious nut allergy. Unfortunately, we can’t offer gluten free as we have wheat products in the home, but we do cater for nut allergies. ‘The food is mostly produced in our home and then we finish things off at the village hall kitchen. We rarely have leftovers but we freeze things like stock for the next event. When our kitchen was out of action recently, we simplified with a wine and cheese talk, it was a wonderfully relaxed and informative evening.
Bryan’s citrus cheesecake
People do expect it to be different each time, and there’s only one dish we have repeated – our steak and ale pie, because people literally couldn’t get enough of it! ‘If we have money left over we give it to a charity or good cause of our choice – we have helped the Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance and a local wildflower project.’ Some privately-owned restaurants and cafes have supper clubs, but this one, run purely by volunteers, takes an extraordinary amount of work to organise. ‘It’s the atmosphere we’ve created here,’ said Jacqui. ‘We’re surprised how popular it’s been and the level of support. People say that it doesn’t actually matter what’s on the menu – they’ll be there!’
To sign up to the Supper Club in Okeford Fitzpaine and find out what’s on the next menu, contact Jacqui Evans on [email protected]
If you are a coeliac, gluten-free isn’t a lifestyle choice – it’s the difference between enjoying life and feeling permanently, miserably, malnourished
Christine Willis, owner of Christine’s Puddings, was in her teens when she was diagnosed as a coeliac.
Until she was in her late teens, Christine Willis always felt ill – she had headaches, stomach aches and was in and out of doctors’ surgeries and hospital for endless tests. It turned out she was suffering from malnutrition – she was a coeliac, and the diagnosis, which literally changed her life, was almost by chance. ‘Eventually, a new doctor said: “I’m going to test you for this.” And that was it,’ says Christine, who runs Christine’s Puddings, a gluten-free bakery, from the Pudding Room at her home in Sturminster Newton. Janet Baxter, who works for the Guild of Fine Food at Gillingham, is also a coeliac – but she didn’t get her diagnosis until she was in her 40s. She had a lot of discomfort but not the continuous misery that Christine suffered. However, as the years went on, she began to experience more problems and to lose weight. ‘I lost a LOT of weight,’ she recalls. ‘I was so thin, I could easily put my hand around my upper arm.’ She was also tired and lacking energy – she never actually fell asleep at the wheel of her car, but it was sometimes a close call: ‘I had various tests and then a doctor did a test for coeliac disease, and after a biopsy, the diagnosis was confirmed. ‘No two people are the same – some people have bloating, some people lose weight. Doctors sometimes test sufferers for cancer before they diagnose coeliac disease.’
Butternut Squash with Coriander and Toasted Seeds quiche, a recipe in Honeybuns’ All Day Cook Book
Janet stresses the importance of getting that proper diagnosis: ‘The internet encourages people to self-diagnose, but it really is necessary to see a doctor and have the blood test.’ There is no medication possible – at present, at least – so coeliacs need to be very careful about their food choices. After her diagnosis, Janet joined the Coeliac UK society and is full of praise for its annual directory of gluten-free products and where to find them. ‘It’s our bible,’ she says. Like many people with food-related health conditions, Janet is used to people assuming she will be OK with ‘just a little bit of wheat’ – she won’t be. Or that it is a simple allergy – ‘It isn’t. It is an auto-immune condition.’
Janet Baxter who works for the Guild of Fine Food
At work, where her roles include the full-on job of dealing with products arriving for Great Taste judging, she often has to handle bread, cakes, biscuits and other wheat-based baked goods (wheat is, of course, in many other products). However, unlike people with a nut allergy (where any contact can be fatal), coeliacs are not affected by handling products with gluten – but hygiene is critical. She is constantly washing her hands. Fortunately, in the years since Janet was diagnosed, the availability of gluten-free (GF) foods has increased significantly, with a large range of GF bread (although the general consensus is that most of it is better toasted than eaten straight), ‘and there are lots of brownies and cakes – but very rarely savoury things.’
Some of Christine’s savoury tarts
Keeping it local Christine Willis can help with that – she makes gluten free pastry that is so good it is in demand from chefs as well as domestic cooks needing gluten-free products. Her range includes Christmas puddings, sweet and savoury tarts, pastry cases and doughnuts plus a few other things which can all be bought at shows or her pop-up shops (see her website, below, for more information). Her business customers include Brimsmore Garden Centre Yeovil and the Celtic Manor resort near Newport to which she supplies ‘thousands of mince pies’ every Christmas. She could have expanded her business or even sold it, but after realising she was ‘being used’ by various companies that approached her, she decided to ‘keep it small and help people.’ She is strongly committed to sourcing locally: ‘Where possible we use local ingredients – free-range eggs, vegetables, cream and cheeses. We strive to make each and every pudding or tart a wholesome expression of our love for food, life and living.’ Christine was one of the founders of Coeliac UK: ‘There were 30 of us initially – now there are thousands of members.’ Like Janet, she stresses the importance of getting a proper medical diagnosis – and she recognises the importance of the directory.
Honeybuns founder Emma Goss-Custard
Bakes by bike There was a time when having to go without a major food group was difficult, if not impossible. Early efforts at gluten-free bread were worthy – but sometimes almost inedible. Now there is a much wider choice, and one of the finest makers of GF products is based in the tiny village of Holwell near Stalbridge. Honeybuns, founded by Emma Goss-Custard, operates from old farm buildings at Nash Farm, where Emma and her husband Matt and a team of more than 30 local people produce a wide range of delicious and tempting treats. The brownies and lemon and ginger shortbread have been customer favourites since the company was founded more than 25 years ago, but they’re accompanied by new delights such as the Persian Flapjack with pistachios and rose blossom water and a fruited ginger traybake. Emma has also written two cookbooks – Honeybuns Gluten-Free Baking, a celebration of cakes and bakes, and the second, Honeybuns All Day Cook Book, which is a broader guide for home cooks, with savoury dishes for every meal alongside some more sweet things. Emma began making cakes and bars when she was at Oxford University, delivering her bakes by bicycle. The inspiration for her gluten-free baking was not coeliac disease – although her products are hugely appreciated by sufferers – but the collection of recipes from her mother and grandmother, reflecting their Italian roots. Many of them were naturally gluten free, using ground almonds, polenta or other ingredients that were unusual at the time. Since Honeybuns started in 1998, there have been many changes – more gluten-free ingredients are available and many more people are looking for gluten-free, dairy-free or vegan products. The Honeybuns range caters to these demands as well, but the emphasis is always on the quality of the ingredients and the pleasure they bring. ‘First and foremost, these are delicious cakes,’ says Emma.
When you look around the shelves of a food shop, you can’t miss the amount of ‘free from’ food on display. There are products that are free from up to 14 different allergens; others are specifically dairy-free, lactose-free, nut-free, meat-free, sugar-free or – the most common – gluten-free. The marketing gives the impression that these ‘free from’ foods are somehow healthier for you, and many people suffering from discomfort when they eat, hope that free-from foods will help. Often they will, if you are one of the large number of people who suffer from food allergies or intolerances. Allergies have increased globally in prevalence, complexity and severity over the past 60 years. The UK has some of the world’s highest rates of what is described on a government website as ‘food hypersensitivity’ – ‘Food allergies affect 1-2% of the UK population, with some allergens responsible for hospital admissions with anaphylaxis.’ In the UK, it is estimated that two million people are living with a diagnosed food allergy, and 600,000 with coeliac disease.
Trying NOT to bang on again about the weather, George Hosford presents a candid look at the farming community’s battle with TB instead
TB testing at Traveller’s Rest Farm: ‘However calmly we handle them for the rest of the year, the animals know when it’s testing day, they can smell the vet a mile off’ All images: George Hosford
There was an article somewhere recently which blew a big hole in the argument that we Brits are boring because we spend all our time discussing the weather. The discussion of the weather is apparently the very thing that binds us together: it never fails to engender a response whether you share the pleasure of a sunny day, or commiserate about endless gloom. The weather not only affects what you are going to wear, it can dictate the entire shape of the day ahead – especially if you are a farmer – and it is also likely to affect what you will eat. So let’s celebrate it, while I dribble out a few weather stats. This may well feel like the wettest winter in many years, but in fact it is only the third wettest in the last 12 years. Both 2013-14 and 2019-20 were wetter from October to February. That said, the rainfall we have endured in that five month period represents 75 per cent of the 39-year annual average total (1,100 mm). Does that mean we are finally heading for a dry period?
In Dorset, new outbreaks of TB in herds have reduced by more than 50 per cent since the beginning of the campaign to control badger numbers in 2016
The stress test Last month saw the dreaded annual TB test, which cattle and humans dread in equal measure. On Monday our vet arrived to find all the cattle arranged and waiting for him. He has to trim off some hair, measure the thickness of the skin, and then inject two vaccines into the skin of the neck of the animal. He then returns after three days to ‘read the lumps’. We have managed to get our herd onto a health pathway that entitles us to annual TB testing, rather than the previous six monthly, unless you are shut down. The outcome of our latest test was that a single animal tested as an Inconclusive Reactor (IR) – which is almost worse than a full reactor. A full reactor will be taken for destruction by DEFRA, and compensation will be paid, whereas an IR can either be destroyed with no compensation, or kept for a second test at 60 days. If it fails again, it is regarded as a reactor and the whole herd will have to pass two further clear tests at 60 day intervals. If it passes, it can return into the herd and be declared clear. However, its presence will prevent the herd’s return to higher health status and therefore will be denied annual testing, instead having to undergo six-monthly testing, which all points towards the animal taking a short journey to heaven as the least worst option. The stress of TB testing on man and animal is immense. However well we set up the handling system to gently encourage the animals into the crush, and however calmly we handle them for the rest of the year, the animals know when it’s testing day, they can smell the vet a mile off and know that he or she is going to stick needles into them – and they sting. Why we are still having to undergo this archaic and inhumane system to manage a disease is quite bewildering. How did we manage to design and build the covid vaccine and stick it in the whole human population in no time at all … and yet still be told that a TB vaccine for cattle is five years away? A huge amount of effort has gone into reducing the reservoir of TB in wildlife – in Dorset in particular, new outbreaks of TB in herds have reduced by well over 50 per cent since the beginning of the campaign to control badger numbers in 2016. That’s a huge improvement, but the cull is being drawn to a close, with small trials being undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of vaccinating badgers – it’s hard to see that having a significant benefit, and it will certainly be wildly poor value for money.
It had to be 9am on a Monday morning, on the main A357 at Durweston lights. Someone had left a gate open. The traffic was backed to the village before we caught up with them. Luckily a couple of kind farmer types had blocked the road and turned them back: being tame and partial to toast (which I was carrying), they were soon in safer pastures
Not just badgers The problem can’t all be laid at the badger’s door however. There is clearly still a reservoir of disease in the cattle population – the testing regime doesn’t seem to be able to root out all animals carrying the disease. And so there they remain, slowly drip feeding it back into their fellow cows. To be honest, until there is an effective bovine vaccine, the near future lies largely in farmers’ hands. The chances of avoiding TB will only be able to improve if farmers practise the following: Operate closed herds (no imports of live cattle from other farms anywhere) Co-operate with APHA (Animal and Plant Health Agency) to use all tests available to clear out the disease from herds Reduce to zero the opportunities for cattle to interact with wildlife. This is hugely difficult, especially when grazing outdoors. Keep a close eye on numbers and activity of wildlife Consider giving up cattle farming This is an admittedly brutal personal view, with huge implications for many farmers’ business models. But without all of the above, in the absence of an effective vaccine we are simply destined to keep going around and around again.
A local expert from Citizen’s Advice provides timely tips on consumer issues.
Q: ‘I’ve just got my first payslip but I don’t understand what all the different sections refer to. How do I know if it’s correct?’
A: Your payslip shows your pay, deductions and tax information. All employers are required to give their employees a payslip and it’s a good idea to keep it for six years. You’ll usually find your employer’s details in the top left corner of the payslip. Your details should be opposite this, in the middle or top right corner. This is also where you might find your payroll or employee number. Next, you’ll see lots of different numbers and codes. The payment date is when your pay will normally arrive in your bank account – it can be weekly or monthly and fall on any day of the month. Your National Insurance (NI) number is unique to you, and you must have a NI number to work in the UK. It’s used to make sure all your NI contributions are recorded so you can get any contributory state benefits you’re entitled to, including state pension later in life. Your payslip might show a tax period: the tax year starts on 1st April and ends on 31st March. The number here corresponds to the period in which you’re being taxed – so if you’re paid monthly, ‘01’ will represent the tax period in April, while ‘12’ would mean March. Next is your tax code. This is decided by HM Revenue and Customs and is used by your employer or pension provider to work out how much Income Tax to take from your pay. Income tax is the tax you pay on your earnings to fund public services: the amount you have to pay will vary depending on your earnings. Your tax code is made up of several numbers and a letter. The numbers refer to how much tax-free income you will get. You can find out what the letters mean on the government website. Make sure you’re not on an emergency tax code otherwise you’ll pay too much tax. Now, pay and deductions. ‘Gross pay’ means how much you’ve earned before anything is deducted. Deductions are amounts taken from your gross pay: common ones include income tax and national insurance, plus pension or student loan payments. Most payslips will add up all the deductions from your pay into a single amount to make it easier for you to see how much is being deducted each month. Your ‘net pay’ is the amount of money you will receive after all the deductions have been worked out. Lastly, taxable pay is the amount of your salary, to date in the current tax year, that has been subjected to tax. This will usually appear next to your net pay figure.
Feltham’s Farm and Broadcaster Nigel Barden at the British Cheese Awards trade show with the award winning cheese
Feltham’s Farm emerged as a standout winner at the British Cheese Awards, securing an impressive tally of seven awards, including Golds, a Silver, and several Bronzes. The farm’s cheeses, known for their unique names and flavours, received awards across multiple categories, showcasing their excellence in both quality and presentation. In the Best Packaging category, Feltham’s Farm’s Rebel Nun, Gert Lush, and Renegade Monk cheeses all clinched Gold, demonstrating the farm’s commitment to creative and appealing packaging. La Fresca Margarita also earned recognition in this category, taking home a Silver award. Additionally, La Fresca Margarita was awarded a Bronze in the Fresh Lactic section, highlighting the cheese’s quality and taste. The Semi Soft Export class saw Gert Lush and Renegade Monk receiving Silver and Bronze awards respectively, underscoring Feltham’s Farm’s appeal to international markets.
The best cheese there The competition was notably fierce this year, with over 600 cheeses entered across various classes. Jem Panufnik, the designer behind Feltham’s Farm’s award-winning packaging, said ‘I am over the moon to have won best Packaging for Renegade Monk – all the Felthams cheeses have such great names and backstories, it’s an illustrator’s dream job!’. Penny Nagle, the farm’s Director, said, ‘We are delighted that our creative design-led ethos for our packaging has been recognised by the cheese industry as adding value to our brand.’ Marcus Fergusson, the Owner and Cheesemaker at Feltham’s Farm, said ‘Our Silvers and Bronzes for Lactic and Semi Soft Export show that we are delivering some terrific cheeses that both professional cheese people and customers love.’ The farm’s success also caught the attention of journalist and broadcaster Nigel Barden, who praised Gert Lush on BBC Radio London’s Robert Elms Show. Barden commended the cheese’s inventive naming and packaging and lauded its taste as ‘the best cheese there.’
Lucy Procter is in the midst of the highs and lows of managing a rain-soaked foaling season
All images: Courtenay Hitchcock
‘I’m just so over this wet weather! When will it end?’ It’s a common refrain this winter – and never more so than from those trying to make a living from rain-soaked land. This month, we have had to sacrifice several fields to the ravages of hooves, hoping that the ground will dry up later in the spring and enable us to roll the poached ground flat once more. The youngest foals spend their first few days finding their legs in the all-weather turnout for short spells. Once the foals are turned out in a field, we are careful to continue to restrict their time out – squelching through muddy ground for too long could pull at their joints if they were left out all day. Also foals are less inclined to lie down and rest if the ground is wet.
All images: Courtenay Hitchcock
In the early part of the breeding season, if it’s raining, the foals go out with special waterproof foal rugs, because if they get wet, the wind will quickly chill them and make them very cold. Once the weather improves and they are older, bigger and stronger, they can withstand moderate rain, but would be brought into stables for a rest if heavy rain persisted for more than a day or so. THowever, once the mares have a foal at foot they have to stay without rugs, as the foal could become tangled in them.
All images: Courtenay Hitchcock
The foals quickly get used to being led in and out of the field, and it doesn’t take long for a single member of staff to be able to lead a mare and foal together. We use well-fitting, leather headcollars for the mares and the foals, and lead the foals using a ‘slip’ – a length of soft webbing which slips through the headcollar, without fastening to it. If a foal is being difficult, the handler can safely let go in the knowledge that if the webbing is stepped on, it will just pull free and will not get tangled around the foal’s legs.
All images: Courtenay Hitchcock
Next year’s foals March has been busy, with a total of seven new foals born. Most of our owners want their mares to visit a stallion again this year so that they produce another foal in 2025. This involves our vet scanning each mare ten days after foaling to check whether she is in her foaling heat. Mares usually come back into season just a week after foaling, but we prefer not to cover on this first cycle as conception rates are quite low. Once we know she has finished this ‘foaling heat’ we can count forward to when the vet should start tracking the next cycle. However, the longer after foaling that a mare’s foaling heat is, the greater the chance of getting in foal: if it goes beyond 14 days, we might consider covering on a foaling heat.
All images: Courtenay Hitchcock
Tracking a mare involves ultrasound scanning the uterus and ovaries to measure the size of the follicles growing in the ovaries and the amount of oedema (thickening of the lining) in the uterus. Once the vet determines that a mare has grown a follicle that is anywhere between 3.5cm and 5cm and that the oedema score is high, we will book a covering within the next day or so and drive a mare to the chosen stallion. The foal always travels to a cover with the mare. Removal of the internal lorry partition essentially turns the lorry into a mobile stable with a lovely deep straw bed, and the foal is free to feed, wander around or lie down and sleep whenever it chooses. At the stallion stud, the foal is held by a handler in the covering shed, so the mare can see her foal at all times and does not get worried. Then they are both loaded to return home.
All images: Courtenay Hitchcock
Honeysuckle grandparents In other news, we were delighted to hear that Honeysuckle, the TGS-bred multiple Grade 1 winning champion mare, safely delivered her first foal, a Walk In The Park filly, on 29th March. In the same way that we are always excited to follow TGS-bred foals, we feel rather like ‘grandparents’ to Honeysuckle’s filly.
It’s a known fact that 40% of Dorset’s population are on low wages. In the Dorset Council and BCP Council (next door) areas, more than 5,000 homes are second homes, holiday lets or just left empty. There is a housing emergency in Dorset – caused by a failure of the councils’ and government’s housing policies over the last 14 years. Dorset has around 4,500 households on the housing register, and more than 300 families in costly temporary accommodation. House prices are 10 to 12 times a typical salary for the area – meaning many Dorset residents can’t afford to buy their own home. Families and young people feel they have to move away from the communities they grew up in to find somewhere they can afford to live. So called ‘affordable housing’ is nothing of the sort. Rents are tied to house prices, and demand for rental homes greatly outstrips supply. The Government definition of affordable housing is ‘80 per cent of the market rent’. Housing inequality is changing the demographic of Dorset and damaging the viability of local services. At current rates we can expect well over half of the population to be over 65 within the next ten to 20 years. Those Labour councillors elected this coming May will seek to ensure that Dorset Council: recognises that good housing is a universal right and produces a new housing strategy within that context works with the incoming [Labour] Government to enable Dorset Council to build more council homes through a different funding process significantly increases the proportion of new homes for social rent for local residents supports community-led and co-operative housing programmes works with the incoming [Labour] Government to strengthen restraints and restrictions on second homes and Airbnb acknowledges that the private rented sector currently provides much of the non-owner-occupied housing in Dorset and will work with good landlords towards raising and enforcing standards reviews the council’s homelessness policies and the housing advice service to ensure that they provide fair, humane and supportive practices for all. Gerald Davies North Dorset Labour Party
The water companies just can’t keep out of the news. The figures for sewage discharges for 2023 were issued last week by the Environment Agency. It’s been a wet year, but has it been doubly as damp as 2022? All sewage overflows have at last been fitted with monitors, and it’s clear that twice as much raw sewage and rainwater has gone into our rivers and the sea this year as in 2022. Discharges into the Stour and its tributaries are significantly up. Wessex Water is spending £3m per month on upgrades, with work continuing at the sewage works in Gillingham and further work planned at Bourton. These investments are welcome, but we are paying for it. Wessex Water has raised bills by 12% this year. If its plans to triple the spend on sewage treatment improvements are agreed this year by the industry regulator OFWAT, we will see bills rise dramatically over the next few years – by up to 50%. The whole industry has been too slow to respond. The Economist newspaper noted that in 2021 the Storm Overflow Discharges Taskforce – a group of conservationists, consumers, the agriculture department, the Environment Agency and water industry bodies – concluded that investment to prevent sewage discharges was not worth the tens of billions of pounds it would cost. Meanwhile, Surfers against Sewage, countless local campaigns and political parties like the Liberal Democrats continue to push hard to change this stinking state of affairs. But where is the haste to fix it? The current government will still allow sewage spills to continue beyond 2040.
Constructive plan needed OFWAT has demonstrated its toothlessness. The Environment Agency lacks the resources to monitor effectively, police the spills and penalise the spillers. Here in Dorset, we understand that Wessex Water performs better than most other water companies. Yes, governments before privatisation spent hopelessly little, but that does not mean the present system is right either. The water companies have run up excessive debt to pay holding company dividends and many are now in deep financial trouble. Little will happen as long as the industry structure and the way it is regulated remains unchanged. We need positive, constructive measures to be put in place to solve the whole challenge of river and sea pollution. This must involve the water companies, agriculture, transport, house building and construction interests, all working together. The next five-year asset management plan period (AMP8) for water companies will start in April 2025. A new government needs to review and change how water utilities are run, to ensure a rapid end to sewage dumping and better value for bill-payers. Liberal Democrats will be down and dirty, campaigning to staunch the sewage flows and their costs. Gary Jackson North Dorset Liberal Democrats
