Earlier this month, United Utilities announced that it was enlisting the services of Charles Cowap, chartered surveyor and founder of Natural Capital Consortium, to carry out an external assessment of the water company’s decision not to renew licenses for game shooting on land that it owns.

A new report has accused United Utilities and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) of “wasting millions of pounds of public money” on land management schemes in the Lake District, resulting in some cases in “environmental disasters”.

On Thursday 25th January the Inn at Whitewell played host to 75 members of the Utilities Uncovered Consultative Panel (formerly the United Utilities Consultative Panel), who met in the pub’s spacious marquee to discuss the impact that game shooting has on rural communities.

70% of Britons believe that United Utilities, the water company which services Northwest England, should continue to allow grouse shooting to take place on land it owns, according to a survey of 1,000 UK adults.

Do United Utilities have no shame? This is the question that a group of concerned locals will be asking through the use of a van display outside United Utilities’ Warrington headquarters today (6th November).

Only 3% of samples collected from Lake Windemere’s shoreline this year met minimum environmental standards, compared to 58% in 2022. At the same time, United Utilities has pumped record amounts of sewage into the North West’s waterways.

United Utilities Water Limited have been fined £800,000 after illegally abstracting 22 billion litres of water from boreholes in Lancashire following a prosecution by the Environment Agency.

Two weeks ago United Utilities issued a statement to help clarify what it is doing. At least we assume that is what it was trying to achieve. For farmers and gamekeepers working on United Utilities’ land it raised further uncertainty. It included the following words:

When the water company United Utilities announced that it would not be renewing shooting leases on its land something extraordinary happened. It united gamekeepers, farmers and those in the hospitality industry that would be directly or indirectly impacted.