Water company United Utilities has been ordered to improve its handling of requests for environmental information, following complaints about a lack of transparency.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has warned water companies ‘we expect transparency to be your default’, telling United Utilities it must improve its compliance in providing information environmental information.

Although not subject to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, water companies have a legal duty to make environmental information available under the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR ), both proactively and upon public demand.

The regulator said that following numerous complaints about United Utilities’ lack of transparency, its investigation found the company repeatedly failed to respond to requests for information within the legal 20-day deadline.

He also said the water company was also refusing requests because it claimed the information requested was not environmental, for example claiming that data relating to the performance of its water treatment works was not relevant. not within the scope of the EIR because they concerned the internal functioning of the equipment. .

The ICO said that because it was a water company, the “significant majority” of the information requested from United Utilities was likely to be environmental in nature, particularly its operational information.

Warren Seddon, director of FOI at the ICO, said: “Any information that could enlighten the public about the operation of United Utilities and its impact on the environment is, by its very nature, likely to be environmental – this includes data on wastewater discharges and the performance of its wastewater treatment works.

“By using such a narrow interpretation of environmental information, United Utilities is deliberately ignoring the bigger picture to evade its legal obligations to even consider whether to disclose information that people rightfully request.”

The ICO has published a “practice recommendation” asking United Utilities to make a much broader interpretation of environmental information and ensure it properly handles legitimate EIR requests.

The action against United Utilities follows a letter from UK Information Commissioner John Edwards to 12 water companies earlier this year, calling on them to prioritize transparency to restore public confidence in the sector after widespread anger over wastewater pollution and lack of information. about this.

Mr Seddon said: “Our message to water companies is simple: we expect transparency to be your default position.

“It is unacceptable to leave people in the dark when they have no choice but to rely on these companies for clean water.

“By issuing our first practice recommendation under the EIR, we are holding United Utilities accountable for improving the way it communicates with the public,” he said, urging all water companies to take the recommendations into account.

A spokesperson for United Utilities said: “We process hundreds of environmental information requests (EIRs) each year and, in a handful of cases, the Information Commissioner’s Office has clarified that the information we received requested to provide fell within the scope of the EIR.

“We have been following this clarification since we received it several months ago.

“We are receiving an increasing number and broader scope of EIRs and have recruited additional, dedicated resources to help us deal with them,” the spokesperson said, adding that over the past 12 months, the company had issued more than 1.5 million lines of EIR. data and responded to more than 330 requests.

“We are committed to being more transparent and making information even more accessible and, from November 2024, our website will detail our compliance with our timeliness of response to EIRs, while providing additional areas of open data in the months to come,” they said.