NORTHUMBRIAN Water’s rating for environmental performance has seen it drop from an industry leader to requiring improvement.

The water company was one of four in the country to fall short of expected standards, according to The Environment Agency which yesterday released its annual report on England’s water and sewerage companies.

The Agency rates each company from one to four star, based measures such as pollution and compliance with permits.

Northumbrian Water was rated two star and requiring improvement in 2019, compared to a four star performance in 2018 which it has vowed to regain or improve upon.

The Environment Agency said the fall was down to poor performance for permit compliance in 2019.

One water and five sewage treatment works resulted in a ‘red’ score for this metric and an automatic two star rating.

Three incidents were due to sample shortfalls associated with lab analysis not meeting quality control standards and are not associated with any known environmental impact.

And it went from one serious pollution incident in 2018 to two in 2019, including at Sedgefield where sewage leaked from a foul sewer on the bankside of a small watercourse near a housing development and could be seen 1.7km.

In other areas, Northumbrian Water was industry leading in the category for total pollution incidents, with 46 incidents – the lowest in the country and 75 per cent fewer incidents than in 2011.

Enforcement action required the company to pay £1.05million to wildlife charities and community projects.

A spokesperson for Northumbrian Water said: “Our rating for 2019 is disappointing as we have a strong track record of protecting and enhancing our environment and are known to be leaders in this area.

“Last year’s assessment saw good performance across the range of measures with industry leading pollution performance, for example.

“This was negated by below expected performance with one measure following some specific issues that caused the drop in our position.

“There were three failures relating to the process around sample testing in the laboratory which the Environment Agency noted as technical in nature and none of which were associated with any Environmental impact whatsoever.

“In addition, another issue related to a third party disposing unauthorised industrial material at one of our treatment works.

“We are very disappointed that these issues have caused the downgrade in our assessed performance but are confident that measures have been taken to avoid these situations in the future.

“While this is a setback in an area of otherwise consistent strong performance, we are on track to achieve a much-improved rating for 2020 and are likely to maintain or even better our already industry-leading performance on pollution incidents.

“Over the last five years we invested more than £400million in work that benefited the environment, and our plan for the next five years includes further investment in this area of more than £700million.

“This investment has seen 33 of the North East’s bathing waters reach good or excellent status in 2019, which is something we know is incredibly important to our communities.”

Rachael Caldwell, environment manager for the Environment Agency in the North East, said: “We’re disappointed in Northumbrian Water’s performance this year, which has seen them go from an industry leading company to this year requiring improvement.

“Specifically, they have suffered in the category of permit compliance and we require significant changes to their sampling and monitoring programme around their sewage treatment sites to ensure this doesn’t happen in the future.

“We take permit compliance very seriously and we expect to see improvements in this area.

“This is something we have spoken to them about at length and which we know they are already taking steps to address. This will be their key focus in the coming year.

“We also want to see no serious pollution incidents going forward and we’ll be working with them to improve performance through their Pollution Incident Reduction Plan (PIRP).

"However it must be noted that they are industry leading when it comes to the number of overall incidents, with the fewest in the country.

“We’re committed to protecting the environment, which is why we do take enforcement action when necessary.

“We do know Northumbrian Water will endeavour to make changes to bring their performance up to standard, and we continue to work closely with them on a number of proactive projects to actively make improvements to our water environment across the North East, and this is reflected in their 100 per cent score for their National Environment Programme delivery.”