Interview: Jeni Colbourne, MBE, chief Inspector of the Drinking Water Inspectorate

“Are there any new hazards? Yes. Opening the market, in theory, significantly puts up the risk.”

Back before privatisation, when ladies’ toilets were almost unheard of in utilities workplaces, a certain microbiologist, disillusioned with the ethics of the pharmaceuticals industry, took her first strides in the water sector. She found it “eternally fascinating” and today that microbiologist is the cheerfully uncompromising chief inspector of the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI).

A few brief words sum up the career philosophy that has led Jeni Colbourne to one of the most indispensable roles in the water sector.

“When I’ve been presented with an opportunity, I’ve always said yes to it,” she says, simply. And when faced with “stony moments”, including deflating the plans of chief executives and senior politicians, she relies on “remembering what you are there to do and showing no fear or favour in doing it”.

The DWI was established in 1990 to “speak for safety and quality” in the newly privatised UK water sector. Remembering that formative period, Colbourne opines: “That run-up to privatisation is probably the only time that scientists in the industry ever had an influential voice.” They were called upon by government to induce public confidence in the new water companies’ ability to maintain safe water supplies by advising on the establishment of a robust regulatory framework – something of a tall order at the time.

“What’s not understood about privatisation by many observers is that it was a mechanism for bringing in, for the first time, legislation that defined water quality and allocated duties to do something about it,” says Colbourne. Before that time, water for human consumption had to meet an unsubstantiated criteria of being “wholesome”, reporting on water quality was “entirely within the gift of companies” to deliver and “there was no independent scrutiny”.

DWI has changed all that, and water quality in the UK has undoubtedly benefited – although don’t be tricked into thinking that a 99.97 per cent score in England and Wales for compliance with the EU Drinking Water Directive this summer is proof of this. Colbourne is dismissive of the achievement.

“Responsibility for compliance with the directive lies with the government,” she states. “It’s not an appropriate performance measure for companies.”

Instead, Colbourne attributes the UK’s improving performance on water safety to a self-service, risk assessment-based regulatory system with powers for criminal prosecution. “The regime is the jewel in our crown,” she sums up.

That said, Colbourne is clear that there is still room for improvement in the way companies approach risk management and the extent to which they understand the individuality of each of the UK’s thousands of supplies. “Companies may crow about water quality results at an aggregate level,” she comments. “But when you go to that next granular level, first of all the figures vary for compliance. But also you find that the hazards and pressures on each supply are very different.

“For each supply, the sources are different, the legacy infrastructure is different, the nature of the consumers is different. All the way through a supply, from source to tap, each one is unique.”

Furthermore, just as companies may get their heads around one set of hazards and find appropriate measures for mitigation, new hazards arise. So, continuous risk assessment is hard – but Colbourne clearly has high expectations and little time for excuses.

Among emerging hazards, the populist issue of fracking is an issue with unappetising tabloid potential for water companies. Although dubious that it poses any real threat to water safety “if it is done properly”, Colbourne is clear that it is a point for inclusion in risk assessments.

“With fracking, all the concerns about water quality come from America. They let loose industry and if it does damage they sort it out afterwards – or not. We don’t have such a Wild West situation. Fracking is just another hazard and it is already regulated for. Water companies must include any concerns they have about the impact of fracking licences being applied for in their risk assessments and take action to mitigate any risk. The first action is to object to the licence if it is confirmed to be a risk.”

But while fracking and other physical threats to water safety may head the list of public water quality worries, Colbourne says her concerns tend to relate to political and regulatory distractions.

“The biggest risk to the industry last year was companies taking their eye off the ball during the price review,” she states. And while DWI has a generally amicable relationship with the economic regulator Ofwat (don’t let Colbourne catch you calling it “the” regulator), there was an uncomfortable period during the introduction of the customer challenge groups that “could have been ironed out with a little bit more consultation”.

DWI’s problem with the groups was not to do with their purpose – of closely engaging customers in the price review process – but with the sudden resource pressure they placed on the inspectorate’s “small but perfectly formed” infrastructure.

“What that meant for us– as an organisation of 40 people – was that instead of there being five to seven committees around the country working on the customer aspects of the new AMP [run by CCWater], there was one per company. The put a huge resource pressure on us.”

DWI “made it work”, however, and ensured that early engagement with companies in the price review process meant none were taken by surprise regarding their statutory obligations for investment in drinking water quality in the forthcoming AMP. There was plenty of time to work these into business plans for Ofwat, says Colbourne.

The next major concerns for DWI in terms of potential threats to UK water quality are the plans for Open Water and the advent of competition in the non-domestic market.

“Are there any new hazards? Yes. Opening the market, in theory, significantly puts up the risk,” states
Colbourne. “We don’t usually, formally, write back to regulators and Defra about their consultations – we just talk to them. But this, we felt, posed a theoretical risk that was sufficiently high that we wanted to put it into writing.”

DWI has sent Defra and its working groups – as well as all water companies and other stakeholders – a “scary list” of all the potential things that it believes could increase risk to supplies and consumers in a competitive market.

“At the end of the day, you have a consumer who turns on a tap and is exposed to the water. By opening the market you are making more complex the relationships upstream that lead to that consumer,” explains Colbourne. “As soon as you introduce more parties, these are human beings and human beings make errors. Those errors lead to a whole series of theoretical risks.”

When something goes wrong under the new market model, to whom does the consumer turn, she asks. “If they ring the person to whom they pay the bill, then there is every likelihood that person will not be responsible for the supply. And if the party responsible for the billing fails in their responsibility to inform the undertaker of the problem… at the very best it will just slow down the process of communication.”

Colbourne says DWI will “take no prisoners” in its quest for reassurance on its concerns. “We are asking everyone involved, ‘what will you do about this, about this, about this?’ As they emerge with what they are doing, we will continue to challenge them. We are very demanding about this because we sit on our high horse and say ‘safety of drinking water is the most important thing’.”

Clearly she is sceptical about the benefits that competition will bring, and although she insists it is not DWI’s responsibility to comment on matters of market reform or other “artificial constructs” conjured up by economists and politicians, she can’t resist adding: “Our analysis is that there is a lot of risk” and she’s “not sure the logic follows through” in terms of the expected cost reductions competition will bring to UK businesses.

“If you increase the risk, you have to increase the precautions against it and that adds cost. So you can see – as a purely academic exercise – that this might not result in lower prices.

“One would hope that the industry, Defra and Ofwat will work out that maybe they can’t control the risks and decide to go down another route,” concludes Colbourne before once again donning her chief inspector’s hat and emphasising that DWI’s authority derives from steering clear of political debate and conversations about cost.

With more than a decade of DWI leadership under her belt, that non-partisan position is clearly one that Colbourne is happy with. And, as previously suggested in this interview, she has complete faith in DWI’s powers to enforce effective investment in drinking water quality and to protect the safety of consumers, whatever the economic or political environment may throw at water companies – including the tight budgets many will be working to in the next AMP, as a result of PR14.

“Companies may say they’ve not been given enough money to take account of their drinking water plans. But that’s just words,” she says, unmoved. “We issued our statutory notices earlier this year and that means companies are obliged to fulfil those requirements – whatever money Ofwat gives them… They’ll just have to stop doing something else that is less important if they come up short.”