This week marked the official start of the summer bathing season, so use of Britain’s many beaches, rivers and watercourses for recreation will start to increase – including here in Shropshire, well not beaches, but our rivers and lakes for angling, wild swimming or canoeing, or even paddling coracles.

So on Monday there was a timely and welcome shift in attitude from the Government on water quality, which saw Ministers agree with the majority of the recommendations in the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) report, Water quality in rivers, on which I and my colleagues on the committee had spent much of last year working.

As readers will know, I have campaigned hard to ensure our rivers are not polluted with sewage and other contaminants, and our EAC inquiry into this issue revealed the true extent of this shocking problem.

Our report made many recommendations, principal among which was an acceptance by the Government and the water industry regulator Ofwat that the water industry need to prioritise long term investment in the sewerage network. This paves the way for a major upgrade of England’s overloaded Victorian sewerage infrastructure – which is at the heart of the problem.

When I started my campaign, lack of data was a huge problem. We simply did not know how much our rivers and waterways were being polluted. So I welcome moves to improve significantly the amount and analysis of monitoring, to hold water companies to account and better understand the dangerous chemical cocktail coursing through our waterways.

As many campaigners point out, enforcement of permit conditions is crucial. So it is good news the Environment Agency is being given extra funding for staff to monitor the extent of permit breaches. But they also need the right powers to enforce action, so as part of our work going forward, the Environmental Audit Committee will be examining the capacity of the relevant agencies to deliver effective environmental protection in this area.

Improving water quality in our rivers is not an easy task and will not be solved overnight. In 2021, sewage poured into our waterways over 370,000 times: this is simply unacceptable. But the government has made significant progress on this issue since I first started my campaign, and this week’s response to my Committee’s report shows a willingness in government to get to the heart of the issue. As ever, I shall keep pressing, and my next update will be on progress coming to the River Teme.