MP secures meeting with Water Minister to discuss Windermere sewage problems

Cumbrian MP Tim Farron has secured a meeting with the Minister of State for Water about tackling sewage pollution in Windermere.

It comes after a recent BBC investigation found that United Utilities repeatedly dumped millions of litres of raw sewage illegally into Windermere.

During a Westminster Hall debate led by Tim last week, the MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale said that he was “deeply angry that the failure of the water company and its regulators to identify and solve these problems” was impacting both the environment and local tourism businesses.

Speaking during the debate, Tim said: “It is important that we tackle this issue from a national perspective, but there is also an issue in my local area that I think we can fix.

“Windermere receives an awful lot of coverage and rightly so. A fifth of the pollution in Windermere comes from septic tanks, including 89 package treatment works around the lakes, all of which could be relatively easily connected to the mains. 

“I wonder whether the Minister would agree to meet me, United Utilities and representatives of the tourism and hospitality industry to see whether we could make that migration, up the standards and do something genuinely useful at the bottom level to improve the water quality of Windermere.”

Responding, Minister Emma Hardy said: “The level of pollution in our iconic lakes such as Windermere and in our beautiful chalk streams is outrageous. It is right that that has become more of an issue as time has gone on. That is a positive thing. We need to value our nature to a far higher level than we ever did before, and change is needed. 

“In the spirit of collaboration, which I have just spoken so much about, of course I will meet the honourable member.”