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Dear Peter Harris,

Thank you for your recent email, which has been passed onto our Environmental Information Regulation (EIR) request team for review.

We respond to requests for environmental information within 20 working days. In some cases, where the request is more complex, an extension of an additional 20 working days may be required - however we will inform you if this in advance.

More information regarding EIR requests can be found on our website.

We will be in touch with you in due course.

Kind Regards

Reporting & Compliance Team
Group Compliance & Assurance
General Counsel
Email:[email address]

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Dear Peter Harris

Thank you for your recent request for information, I'm contacting you to provide an update on your enquiry.

Our response is still going through the governance and assurance processes therefore, I'm giving notice that we require a 20 day extension under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 act.

Thank you for your patience in this matter, we will be in touch with further information in due course.

Kind Regards

Reporting & Compliance Team
Group Compliance & Assurance
General Counsel
Email:[email address]

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ST Classification: UNMARKED

Dear Peter,

Thank you for your Environmental Information request relating to EDM data
pertaining to our Southwell Treatment works and monitored outfalls both up
and downstream of the River Greets confluence with the River Trent. It is
also worth noting that we have emergency unmonitored outfalls in this area
too.  We have carefully considered your request, applying the public
interest test where relevant, and the presumption in favour of disclosure,
as required by the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (“EIR”).

I can confirm that we do hold EDM data for this site. However, we will
unfortunately not be able to provide this data to at the present time.

As you may be aware, Ofwat and the Environment Agency have recently
launched an investigation into sewage treatment works and discharges (see
[1]https://www.gov.uk/government/news/water...).

In this context, providing the information requested would adversely
affect the course of justice and the ability to receive a fair trial
(should a trial result from the current investigation), because the
information is considered relevant to matters which are subject to the
current investigation and to potential consideration by the regulators and
potentially the courts. In this context, regulation 12(5)(b) provides an
exemption from disclosure.

You will appreciate that we are unable to provide further comment during a
live investigation.

Sorry we were unable to help with your request on this occasion.

Kind regards

Reporting & Compliance Team

Group Compliance & Assurance

General Counsel

Severn Trent Plc (registered number 2366619) and Severn Trent Water
Limited (registered number 2366686) (together the "Companies") are both
limited companies registered in England & Wales with their registered
office at Severn Trent Centre, 2 St John's Street, Coventry, CV1 2LZ This
email (which includes any files attached to it) is not contractually
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contain CONFIDENTIAL, legally privileged or trade secret information
protected by law. If you have received this message in error please delete
it and notify us immediately by telephoning +44 2477715000. If you are not
the intended recipient you must not use, disclose, distribute, reproduce,
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Please note the Companies reserve the right to monitor email
communicationsin accordance with applicable law and regulations. To the
extent permitted by law, neither the Companies or any of their
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necessarily made on behalf of the Companies. Reduce waste! Please consider
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References

Visible links
1. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/water...

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Peter,

I am not sure if you received confirmation of your request for an internal review. I can confirm that we are undertaking an internal review, and will endeavour to respond with the outcome by the end of this week.

Many Thanks
EIR Team

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Morning Peter,

Please accept my apologies, due to some resource issues the response has been delayed. I can confirm that this is with our EIR team. We will hopefully comeback to you this week.

Many Thanks
Severn Trent EIR team

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ST Classification: UNMARKED

Dear Peter,

RE: Environmental Information Regulations request - 22nd December 2021

Many thanks for your request. In our response we have outlined some background and context to our work with rivers, along with providing you with data that we think will be useful.

Context about our work with rivers:

Severn Trent already have one of the largest environmental investment programmes in the industry, with £355m spent in AMP6 improving 1600km stretch of rivers in our region and with a more extensive plan for AMP7 well underway, further enhanced with the £566m green recovery investment. The latter will help us to go faster on overflow improvements and to explore more nature friendly and zero carbon solutions. Our bathing river proposals include improvements to overflows, river quality monitoring and implementing an online platform for sharing spill data with customers in real time. Our WFD driven programmes over many AMPs have led to enhancements at our treatment works, enabling us to meet tighter and tighter consents, directly benefitting river quality across our region.

On a very practical level our new River Rangers team will carry out vital operational, monitoring and sampling activities, as well as addressing the aesthetic quality of our rivers though the removal of unsightly rag and other debris, which we know causes real distress in our communities. Above all, we think it is important to look at the health of our rivers from a holistic perspective, which is why we have also focussed on enhancing the biodiversity of 5,000 hectares of land by 2027 with our Great Big Nature Boost.

The energy and pace of change we are driving can be seen by the fact that we improved the biodiversity of 233 hectares of land between 2015 and 2020, whereas in 2020/21 we have already improved 2,632 hectares. We will continue to take a leadership role across our catchments, expanding our existing highly successful Farm to Tap and Specialist On-Farm Advice schemes to 9,000 farmers in our region, so that their contribution to phosphates in some of our catchment watercourses is reduced by up to 66%. Over the last decade we engaged with 98% of the farmers in our priority catchments.

We have also been carrying out important work with the Beavers Trust on re-introducing beavers in our rivers, to restore vital riparian buffers. We will also continue to work with industry, councils and other catchment users using risk mapping, data analysis and catchment walkovers covering 44 catchments to fully play our part in achieving the 25 year Environment Plan target of 75% good ecological status in UK rivers as soon as possible.

Data:

In terms of your specific request of 22 December 2021, we have assumed that you are seeking to better understand the performance of our waste treatment works. Here we have set out what we think is the best and most helpful data source:

1, Link to our regulatory library - which provides data on our Annual performance, PR19 and Green recovery submissions and EDM spill data - https://www.stwater.co.uk/regulatory-lib...
2. Link to our 2021 Annual Performance report - this provides data on sewage treatment works covering population equivalent served, volume of wastewater receiving treatment at sewage treatment works, volume of trade effluent, flow passed to full treatment and other helpful details on our works https://www.stwater.co.uk/content/dam/st...
5. The EA assesses and publishes sector environmental performance - https://www.gov.uk/government/publicatio...

We have carefully considered your specific request regards Southwell wastewater treatment works. I would like to advise that our records show that Southwell STW drains into the River Trent not the River Greet. As outlined in your request we have traced upstream of Southwell STW and the overflows that are within the river Greet catchment are Southwell Nottingham Road, Old Station Southwell, Southwell Church Street, Southwell Newark road, Southwell Halloughton. EDM data pertaining to these sites for 2020 is published on our website https://www.stwater.co.uk/regulatory-lib.... Please note that one of the CSOs (Riverside) was noted to have a data error between 11th Feb & 15th April 2021 and as such should be used with caution. This error has since been corrected and will be referenced in our 2021 EA submission.

Further to the above data we are unable to additionally provide specific information on EDM start and stop times. As you may be aware, Ofwat and the Environment Agency are conducting an investigation into sewage treatment works and discharges (see https://www.gov.uk/government/news/water...). As per the public notice issued by the EA on 16th February 2022, stating that "Monitoring data received by the Environment Agency is environmental information and is normally provided on an annual basis, or at our request. Whilst the investigation is ongoing, it's vital that any potential evidence or proceedings are not compromised by the inappropriate sharing of sensitive data or information that could jeopardise our ability to take enforcement action...." Providing the EDM start and stop times would adversely affect the current investigations and any regulatory or court hearings that may result (should there be any); this information is relevant to matters which are subject to potential consideration by the regulators and potentially the courts. In this context, regulation 12(5)(b) provides an exemption from disclosure. We are satisfied that the public interest in not disclosing the data and not prejudicing the investigation is greater than the public interest in providing the data.

As such, given the ongoing investigation, we are unable to provide EDM start and stop times data for Southwelll STW at this current time. Where further data on our treatment works can be shared, similar to the EA, we will be publishing the data on our website. You will appreciate, however, that we are limited in what we can say during the current investigations.

Your sincerely,
Severn Trent EIR Team

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