Ministers ‘must overrule Nimbys and build reservoirs’ to beat drought

MINISTERS should overrule opposition from local residents, councillors and MPs to give new reservoirs the green light by 2025, the Government’s infrastructure tsar says today.

Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Sir John Armitt, chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, warned that the need for additional reservoirs was becoming increasingly urgent amid the threat of prolonged droughts.

Continuing to allow residents to veto such schemes would mean that the new reservoirs Britain needs never get built, he suggested, citing objections to the High Speed 2 rail project.

“It’s a bit like people living in the Chilterns: if it was left to them, HS2 wouldn’t go through the Chilterns,” he said.

Sir John’s intervention comes after the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced more than half of England would be moved into drought status as a result of the driest summer in 50 years.

The last reservoir for public water supply was built in 1991 as local resistance scuppers new projects.

Thames Water, which has announced plans for a hosepipe ban because of water shortages, has spent more than 15 years trying to construct a £1billion reservoir in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, but the county council has vowed to fight its latest attempt. A smaller reservoir is due to be built in Havant, in Hampshire.

Sir John cited the Abingdon scheme as an example of a project that should be given a green light by ministers despite local opposition. Layla Moran, the local MP and Liberal Democrat frontbencher, has said the proposed reservoir would have a “catastrophic” effect on wildlife and cause disruption to residents.

Sir John acknowledged that residents fear such projects would cause more than a decade of “upheaval” and result in “green and pleasant fields suddenly becoming a vast hole”.

But he said while a small number of people might be “inconvenienced and disappointed”, reservoirs provided a “social benefit” to “a very large number of people” beyond those in their immediate vicinity.

He added: “The urgency is increasing and, really, if we’re going to be in a better position by 2040 to 2050, those sorts of decisions are going to be needed to be made and an agreement to go ahead certainly by 2025.”

He warned that failing to act could damage the Conservatives at the polls. “If you constantly fail to make sure that the basic infrastructure that everyone needs to live their lives is not being provided, then people aren’t going to vote for you sooner or later,” he said.

“A local politician will clearly do what he can, one way or another, to support his constituents and argue the case as best he can for them. That’s why the decisions need to be made at the national government level, taking into account all the different factors.”

In a report published four years ago, the National Infrastructure Commission called for more reservoirs and warned that such schemes “must be planned well before they are needed”, pointing out that it takes more than a decade “from the decision to build to being able to use the water supplied”.

Sir John also wants the Government to publish minimum “resilience standards”, which could require firms to ensure that no household is without water for more than a specified number of days each year – with penalties for companies that fail to comply.

Yesterday, thousands of homes in Surrey were left without water after “technical issues” at a treatment works.

Sir John has also been pushing for more action to plug leaks and schemes to transfer water from areas of sufficient

supply to parts of the country where there are shortages. “Occasionally we may have to get to a point where, despite all the objections, the Secretary of State will say, ‘I’ve heard all the arguments and I’m willing for this to go forward, whether it’s a new tunnel under the River Thames, or whether it’s a new reservoir’,” he said.

“Something like a reservoir on a large area in Oxfordshire, is bound to meet resistance. For people viewing 15 years of uncertainty, upheaval, construction, noise, what they’ve seen as being green and pleasant fields suddenly becoming a vast hole... they’re unlikely to vote for that left to a free choice.”

Writing in this newspaper last week, George Eustice, the Environment Secretary, pledged to “streamline the process of gaining planning permission” for new reservoirs.

But Sir John suggested the Government’s plan only addressed the issue in a “theoretical sense”.

He said: “We just can’t keep thinking about these things forever. Somebody needs to say, right, OK, that’s what we want to achieve ... now, what are we going to do to deliver that?”