 Welcome to the seventh meeting of 2009 of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. Can I remind everyone to switch off their mobile phones as they may affect the broadcasting system? First, I need to mention that Claudia Beamish has sent her apologies for today. Our agenda item 1 is to consider whether to take item 4 in private. Does everyone agree? Agenda item 2 is to take evidence from Sue Pech. Good morning, Ms Pech. From the drinking water equality regulator for Scotland on the issues arising from petition PE1646 on drinking water supplies in Scotland. I would like to welcome Sue Pech to the committee. I will start by asking you a very broad general question about what the role of the drinking water quality regulator is and how you fit in the governance arrangements surrounding Scottish water. Okay. Essentially my role is to scrutinise Scottish water in regard to their drinking water quality duties. That is both complying with drinking water quality standards as well as other duties that they have. They are required to treat water, they are required to disinfect water, so we look at all of those activities. That is the main part of the role. We also have another function that concerns local authorities, so we also have to supervise local authorities in respect of their drinking water quality duties. That is predominantly associated with private water supplies that they regulate. In terms of how we fit in with the Scottish water, there are quite a number of regulators for Scottish water, so SEPA regulates them in respect to wastewater discharges. We are very much entirely focused on drinking water quality, leaving treatment works at customers taps throughout the whole supply chain. There is an economic regulator who scrutinise them in terms of their price review representation. Are they taking customers' views into account? There is also consumer advice, a consumer futures unit who represents consumer views. It is quite a broad range of supervision, so that is my particular part of it, is the drinking water quality. In terms of what we actually do, we review all of Scottish water's regulatory sample data, look to whether improvement is needed, advise Scottish water to consider improvements needed. If necessary, I can take further action. I have quite a wide range of enforcement powers. We also audit what Scottish water does, so we visit their assets and do what we call a technical audit of treatment works. We would also look at some of their activities such as repairing mains and do spot audits, particularly around the hygiene of that activity. We audit the laboratory, so it is quite a broad range of audit tasks. We also investigate what we call a water quality incident. Scottish water is required to tell us and other agencies, such as local authorities and health boards, of anything that is any sample failure or anything that has happened at treatment works where a process might have failed. We receive about 800 of those notifications a year. Typically, around 30, we would class as more significant and require a detailed investigation. We go through our assessment of that and issue our findings to the chief executive for Scottish water. We might make recommendations and observations on what we found in terms of how well Scottish water responded to a particular problem and what improvements it would have put in place following that. That is quite a long answer to a very straightforward question. No, that is very comprehensive. That is what we definitely need. Stewart Stevenson, there is a quick question, something that you said. I just wanted to be clear if something is in there, probably in private world, bottled water plants, of which we have quite a few. Are you responsible in any way for them? No, I am not. So who is? Food Standards Scotland, and then I would imagine local authorities have some role. Right, okay. It is treated under food legislation. That is fine, thank you. For where I passed on to my colleagues, you mentioned enforcement. Yes. What enforcement powers do you have if something has not been rectified? I have an enforcement policy, so we would generally try to work very collaboratively. So we would start off with recommending that improvements are needed. If that is not happening, or if something is not included in Scottish water's current investment programme, so their investment programme, which is set for 2015 to 2021, and they have within that something that is referred to as a technical expression, and that is a very detailed schedule of all the activities that they need to undertake for drinking water quality or environmental improvements, and also resilience activities. That is a commitment that they have made to the Scottish Government in the price review over what they will deliver against Government objectives. So if an activity is listed in there, that would be unlikely to move to enforcement action unless I was not happy with the pace. So then my enforcement powers, I basically can take enforcement action for any act where I feel there is a significant risk to health, or a drink water standard needs to be improved, or that that is a persistent failure that has been occurring. I have also got an emergency power, which, if you like, is almost like an emergency notice to stop a certain activity, and that has never been used. I could not really imagine a scenario where we would be forced to take that sort of action. Okay. Well, thank you very much. I will pass on to my colleague John Scott. Thank you, convener. Your budget and the WQR budget for the next year has gone up by over 70 per cent. Can you tell us what this increase in your budget is for and what it will deliver in terms of additionality? My budget is, if you like, split into two parts, so Scottish Government recover from Scottish Water quite a considerable cost in terms of delivery of the regulator's functions. I think that it's better to put that into context of a percentage as it's increased from £270,000 to £450,000. Some of that has been associated with the change to the total operating cost regime. I've also, within Scottish Government, I have two members of staff that look at policy. We're seeing, if you like, a rising need in terms of policy, activity. The European Commission is currently considering a revised drinking water directive that's creating quite a workload, so I increased the number of staff I have specifically to deal both with that and also with a new duty that's been placed on us, which is to do with the security of networking information systems, specifically for Scottish Waters in terms of cyber activity and the security of water supplies from the point of view of operating technology and information technology. Thank you. Self-evidently, what you do is science-based, but is this delivered in-house or perhaps from what you've just said it's not or through contractors? Given what you've just said, do you see the new water quality regulations being affected by Brexit? Where will you sit in all of that? Do you know yet? In terms of our science basis, we don't have a specific research budget ourselves. We rely very heavily on the World Health Organization guidelines and their documentation, and that's viewed as the authoritative text in terms of drinking water quality safety, so that's, if you like, our go-to place for information. We also are a member of the International Waters Association and have access to research papers that they produce. We are also part of the Scottish Government Centre for Research Excellence in Water. They have a theme for drinking water quality. I sit on the steering group for that, so we can call on that delivery route, if you like, to have specific pieces of work done. I can also recommend through the Scottish Government's contract research fund any specific pieces of work that need to be done. There's also the strategic research programme of work that goes on as well. We work quite closely with our counterparts in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and also the Republic of Ireland, so we meet annually to talk about the research programme. We're quite well aware of the research programme that DEFRA has on going. The other source that we look at is that we contribute and pay for an advisory service that comes from Water Research Centre. That produces lots and lots of data sheets on a whole range of chemicals and microbiological substances that we can look at in terms of likely presence in water, safety, what impact treatment has. If you like, that's our source of information. In terms of standards, the standards that we have are all derived from the Drink and Water Directive, which has been in place since 1998. Most of those standards are ultimately derived from the World Health Organization guideline values. That director is transposed into Scots law, so those are the standards that we've got. The exit from Europe won't make any impact on those standards. Thank you. What are the most recent statistics on the quality of drinking water in Scotland and what are the underlying trends in terms of overall quality? Is it improving or... The overall quality that we report is for results as measured at the customer's tap, and that's just recorded as a percentage. For 2017, it was 99.91. For 2018, we've still to receive the final data for that. It's probably going to be slightly worse. The main trends that I would pull out would be trihalomethanes, which is a disinfection by-product. It's been a focus of Scottish Waters investment programme and our retention for some time. That has been improving, but seems to have plateaued for the last couple of years. Ion and manganese are areas that come from water mains, and manganese can come from source waters. That's an area of activity that needs more treatment at source. Mains cleaning and mains flushing needs to happen. Microbiological quality was something that I called out in my report for 2017. Water treatment works, service reservoirs particularly. I highlighted some concerns over the maintenance of service reservoirs. Scottish Water have responded to that concern by increasing the level investment that they carry out on service reservoirs in terms of repairs. I'm being crocal for a moment, and my constituency has been quite a bit of water discoloration, possibly due to the extraordinary climatic conditions last year, in the spring and then the summer. Are there any comments to make on that continuing discoloration in the water? It's something that we're investigating. We've been aware of it. Obviously, Scottish Water have had to report that to us, and that has been classed as a significant water quality incident. I understand from one of my inspectors that assessment is almost complete. We'll be finalising our report for Scottish Water on that. What I understand has been a number of factors that have resulted in that happening, one of which was that they introduced chloramination from the treatment works at Braddon. That has changed the water chemistry. That coincided with very high water flows and high demand through the summer period, and that seems to have caused a dislodging of main sediment throughout the network. Scottish Water responded to that with flushing. I'm advised that that immediate incident didn't really have an impact, so they had to take some specialist advice from Sheffield University who was one of the leading experts in water mains. They've now come up with a programme of work of low-velocity flushing to bid shimonishing. What I have asked them for is an actual programme of work, because, obviously, the high water temperatures and flows—we're not now seeing that—when I reviewed the data complaints, they have lessened, but they're not back at the typical historic levels for that supply area. I'm still waiting to see the programme activities, which include a timeline, and I'll take a view on whether that is reasonable and whether those activities are going to deliver the improvement. I'll add a personal point to view. I'd be very grateful if you could provide us with your view on that information when you receive it, maybe through the committee or to me personally, John Scott, who is the MSP for air. Finally, I want to ask you—can you explain how your process is taking into account concerns about taste, odour, alongside water quality, because water can be safe, but it can obviously have smells and things. Tasting odour is included in the standards that we have in Scotland, but it's classed as an indicator, and the measure there is whether customers find it acceptable or not. Has it changed and has it become unacceptable? What we'd expect Scottish Water to do in that instance is to investigate, to find out why has that water—the taste of that water changed, why is there an odour where perhaps there wasn't one before, and the first instance and first concern is that because there is a risk to health, is there something in the water that's going to cause a risk to health? If there isn't something there that's going to cause a risk to health, we would look at what is creating that taste. Certainly, in the summer, we reported to us some problems that were to do with algal growth and algal blooms that were given an earthy taste to the water that caused widespread complaint. I have asked Scottish Water to carry out some feasibility study into what it can do to prevent that happening. It certainly went for something particularly widespread, but I would consider taking action. Thank you so much. You've got a short question. Can you explain how the public and customers interact with you and your functions? What are the public engagement structures that you work with? I think that it's probably fair to say on a day-to-day basis that we wouldn't normally engage with customers. We are a very, very small team, so our engagement tends to be following a water quality incident. We may very well seek their views on how Scottish Water investigated or responded or acted to that problem. In terms of complaints, we review complaint data from Scottish Water and we also act as a second tier. If someone is not happy with how Scottish Water responded, we would investigate for that particular individual. We have a website that we try to include on their information about water quality, such as FAQs, and that type of thing. That is probably the extent of that level of engagement, if you like. No questions from Stuart Stevenson. Thank you very much. Clearly, part of what Scottish Water is doing is cleaving and disinfecting the water before it reaches the tap where you are measuring it. What input do you have into the methods that they use for that disinfection, if any? In terms of what they are required to do, our legislation requires them to disinfect the water. They are also required to use only approved products and processes. There is an approval process, so they cannot just select any particular pipe or filter that it has to have come through an approval process. My colleagues at DWI run the UK approval process. We tend to refer to the chemicals that they use to their traditional chemicals. I am sorry, could you repeat that? The chemicals in the approval process are referred to in that as traditional chemicals, so they are required to have a BSEN standard that sets out the level of purity that the chemical has to have. In terms of the decision and choice that Scottish Water makes, my view will be over whether it is delivering the required outcome. That will be what I would be looking for. If I think that the choice of process is not going to deliver the outcome, then I will voice that and perhaps take some stronger action. However, the choice of how they disinfect and how they treat water lies with Scottish Water. In your earlier answer, one of the things that you focused on was iron as a contaminant and you identified water mains. Clearly, there are two types of water mains, one that takes the water to the processing plant and then mains that take it from there to the customer. I can see how the plant can deal with the water that arrives in eliminating iron. How does Scottish Water protect contamination by iron and, indeed, other contaminants in the part of the distribution network from the processing plant to the customer's tap? In terms of protecting the water as it leaves the plant, it will use iron coagulants or aluminium coagulants to treat the water. It has to have the levels of iron, manganes and aluminium as low as possible, leaving the treatment plant. It enters into the distribution system. It has a mix of materials because some of the pipes are very old and some of them are 100 years old. They might have unlined iron pipes and more recent pipes that have gone over the past 20 or so years have been plastic PVC pipes. One of the tactics that they can use is that they can renew the pipes. They use flushing a lot, so that they clean the material out of the pipe. If the pipe degrades, if the iron degrades, then that needs to be flushed out. Ultimately, if the decoration gets too bad, then they will need to renew those because they may be getting burst mains and that can also create water quality issues with discoloration and risk of ingress as well. One of the other ways of protecting the water as it travels from the treatment works to customer's taps is that it has a residual disinfection, so it will have a small amount of free chlorine or monochloramine, so that that water is protected as it passes through the distribution system, and make sure that there is not an increase in biological activity in that vein. Those additives that are in the water that leaves the water treatment plant are an essential part of protecting the water that comes out of our tap from things that may happen in the retail distribution network. It would be impossible to put water into the system that had no protection from what might happen in the network. It would not be recommended. It is not set out in our regulations that they must have a residual disinfection, but it is viewed as best practice, certainly for the UK. Right. Certainly in the UK, what about elsewhere? You made that qualification quite deliberately, so I would be interested to know what other solutions do others adopt. Not all countries have a residual disinfection in the water. In particularly Germany, they tend not to have a free chlorine residual in the water as supplied. They rely on much more extensive water treatment processes, so they will have more stages of treatment than Scottish water perhaps has. I think that their networks are perhaps newer as well. Certainly some of the countries have a more rapid network mains renewal rate than Scotland and the rest of the UK have. There are different policies in different countries. Therefore, the distance the water travels from the treatment plant to the tap is quite different in Germany by the sounds of it from what you would expect. I do not know. I could not comment on the distance, but they have many more stages of treatment. Water in Germany goes through several treatment plants. Several processes and several stages. I would like to turn to disinfection byproducts, which you have touched on earlier. We know that, in Scotland, article 29.2 of the 2014 regulations places a requirement on Scottish water to keep DPP levels as low as possible without compromising the effectiveness of disinfection or treatment. We also know that the WHO guidelines highlight the importance of limiting the presence of DPPs in the public water supply as much as possible and establishing a robust monitoring and testing regime. I would be curious to know how is a balance struck between the requirement to disinfect drinking water and the limiting of DPPs in the water? The primary requirement is the treatment and disinfection for public health protection. To minimise disinfection byproducts, Scottish water has to try to minimise the precursors, the compounds that would react with chlorine or other disinfection products to form that byproduct. Part of the pre-treatment, if you like, so the coagulation and filtration of that water is to reduce those precursors as much as possible. Going further back, they can also look at source control and how they can protect sources from deterioration. They have been looking at peatland restoration in some areas to try to reduce the organic loading on that. It is about removing the precursors to try to minimise the formation of those byproducts. The WHO guidelines state that the risks to health from these byproducts are extremely small in comparison to the risks associated with inadequate disinfection. It is important that disinfection efficacy is not compromised in attempting to control such byproducts. Do you reckon that you have the balance right? How would you respond to concerns that there are a number of DPPs that are not regulated and are therefore not tested for? We have a standard for trihalomethanes. It is generally viewed as being not an indicator, if you like. If trihalomethanes are present, that is an indication that there will be other disinfection byproducts such as haloacetic acid present as well. Historically, that is how we viewed THMs and why they are so important. We always look at not just areas where standards have failed, but also is it at 90 per cent of the standard and trying to drive that down? We have recently requested Scottish Water to start to monitor for other disinfection byproducts as well, so while they might not be regulated, I have taken the view that it needs further evidence that supports that minimisation, so it has been asked to extend the monitoring into other disinfection byproducts. It has been looking at haloacetic acids, NDMA and so on. That has been introduced fairly recently, but I know that Scottish Water have contracted Cranfield University in 2016 to do further research for them. That has been looking at a much broader range of disinfection byproducts so that they can build that evidence base for me that they are minimising byproducts. Do you know when that work is likely to be completed? All of the analysis has been completed. It is just in the final stages of the report being confirmed and completed. There are questions on the co-remination from John Scott. I want to ask whether any further work has been done on any possible health impacts of co-remination since the committee last heard and discussed this with Scottish Water. Any further work? Work, direct effects or exacerbation of existing health conditions that have been suggested may be caused by co-remination. Other than the work that Cranfield University is doing to look at disinfection byproducts, I am not aware of any further work that has been done by NHS Highland or Health Protection Scotland following the work that was done two years ago now. Are there any other effects that you have concerns about that co-remination causes or not? Obviously. I am quite aware that there are concerns over the disinfection byproducts related to co-remination. It is always very clear with Scottish Water that they need to look at the sources and the types of water that they are going to use. There are certain risk factors that would make increased prevalence of formation of NDMAs and those are the sorts of things that Scottish Water needs to take on board when deciding whether it is an appropriate technique or not. I suppose that the bottom line is that you are content that this process is safe. Yes, I am. I certainly want to hear that reassurance from you. I move on to nitrates and nitrites. We know that drinking water treated with monoclora ammine can be a source for nitrates and nitrites, which can be harmful to humans in high concentrations. Can you offer the committee reassurances in this regard that these concentrations don't have a rich dangerous level? The main concern is the combination of nitrate and nitrite that can cause something that is called blue baby syndrome. That is a health concern. Within the regulations there is a calculation of how much of either of those should not be exceeded. We have not had any concerns over the combination of them or worries over that. I have had some concerns over nitrite. There have been a number of sample failures for nitrite and have taken that up with Scottish Water in terms of the control of the process. I was quite pleased to see, certainly for 2018, that that was a much improved position compared to performance in 2017. It puts in place some flushing programmes and some programmes of work that, for a short period of time, change the disinfection over to reduce nitrite problems that are forming in particular parts of the network. We are aware that Scottish Water is designing or currently constructing three improvement works that will use chloramination. How is the use of chloramination relative to other disinfecting methods? What financial considerations or other is given with regard to existing infrastructures, water sources or land use practicalities in the catchment area when that is considered? In terms of its use as a disinfection process, it is not recommended as the primary disinfection process because it is not as effective as chlorine. I would not be happy if they were going to use that and they would generally use it after chlorine just to give that residual. The three treatment processes that I am aware of are all about disinfection by-products and particularly THMs. In terms of their decision making process, they have got to consider essentially the whole-life cost of the process. We do not really want to stray too much into the economic regulators territory here in terms of the financing of it, but they would genuinely look at the cost and the benefits of a particular process and will it deliver the outcome that they are required to achieve from a drinking water quality perspective? We heard some suggestions that there was a water plant in the past that was causing too much to run and Scottish Water decided to use dechlorination to replace the mechanical cleaning of the water, if you like. What financial consideration came into that? Is there a presumption sometimes that this method is going to cost too much, so we will use another? I am not familiar with the example that you have, but I am quite happy to follow up on that if you could give me some more information. Okay, I certainly do that. Do you anticipate that there is going to be any extension of chloramination in the future and any indication of what percentage of Scottish Water would eventually be treated in that way? I am aware that, when I have spoken to them, they have three treatment works under consideration that might have chloramination installed. They have also got a number of other treatment works that are in feasibility study because of concerns over disinfection by product risks. There are a number of options that they are considering for those, which are a combination of other treatment options. Ion exchange, GAC—Granium Activated Carbon Treatment Process—those are all in the mix. It is difficult to say how much more they might do, but they are not concentrating solely on chloramination. They will consider what all the treatment options are and then have to do the project appraisal on that basis. They have three treatment processes for ion exchange under construction just now, as well, and those are because of the need to minimise disinfection byproducts. I think that you have already covered a little bit of information around how other countries in Netherlands or Germany are perhaps going in a different direction here. You particularly mentioned about how Germany has more of a precautionary approach to NDMAs. Why, in your view, have we not gone down that route in the UK? Is it because of the age of the infrastructure that we have? Is it because we have particular problems in relation to land use or peat soils? I mean, there seems to be quite a divergence within the European Union on this, and I am interested to know why you think that we are currently on this direction. That is an interesting question. I am not really sure that there has been a deliberate policy choice and divergence, not to be more prescriptive. The regulations are set up in such a way that there is that duty to minimise disinfection byproducts. Admittedly, a lot of focus has been on THMs, but that duty exists. The approach in the UK has been rather to be very prescriptive over how that is delivered, and to allow choice within quite a set context of minimisation. That is perhaps the background. I do not think that it is really to do with choice of infrastructure, and the choice of treatment process has to be appropriate to the source and the risks that you deal with. Some of the English companies have more stages of treatment because they have more issues in their source waters. They have much more prevalence of pesticides that need to be removed than we would have in Scotland. The choice of process has to be tailored to the problem, and I think that, potentially, Germany will have had similar issues as well. I cannot really second-guess the problems that it has, which I should not do, but that choice of process has got to be designed to tailor to the source that has been treated. You mentioned earlier on about removal of precursors, and that is a particular issue in Scotland, given peaty soils and high numbers of livestock on the hill and everything else. You are a drinking water quality regulator, but do you feel the impact of the land use strategy or catchment level approaches to managing the land in a way that perhaps reduces flooding, but also reduces the loss of peat soils? Could you repeat that question for me, please? In terms of the land use strategy, does your work or influence stretch over into policies around how we actually manage catchments? No, it does not, but I do work with SEPA, and I have certainly recently been discussing with SEPA their water sector plan, which has been out for consultation and exploring issues around protection of source waters used for drinking water production. They have very much focused on water framework directive, in particular looking at pollutants, but I would be quite keen that organic material or metals such as manganese also form part of that. Certainly Scottish Water's strategic plan is highlighting the challenge that they face over the next 20-25 years with rising levels of organics in their source waters. It is a key challenge in managing the water environment. In your view, is there enough work going into the land management solutions to try and remove those precursors? I think that most people probably always say that there is always more that can be done. Certainly Scottish Water do have a sustainable land management team of people who work with local land agents. They do a lot of research and work with Forestry Commission in terms of their activities. That is a routine part of the business. I think that I would have perhaps a word of caution that land management is an essential part of the multi-barrier approach, but it is not going to deliver completely that removal of precursors. Certainly the focus needs to be on those catchments where Scottish Water are talking and highlighting deterioration. If that work starts now before they move into higher risk in terms of what is coming out of the treatment works, that is something that I would encourage. I would like to move on to the petition that we mentioned. PE1646 has a number of questions from members about the progress that has been made in addressing the concerns that have been raised in that petition. First, from Angus MacDonald. Thanks, convener. You wrote to the Petitions Committee in June 2017 with detail on the work that you have carried out in relation to the Agamor water treatment works. Are you able to update the committee on any further work that has been carried out since then? We have met with Scottish Water a couple of times just to review the sampling programme that they have. We requested that that was extended. I think that that was last year and that they continued with some of the additional monitoring that they were doing. They reviewed how well they were controlling things like pH at the treatment works and that is something that they have been focused on improving. We have also had updates from them on the number of contacts that they have been receiving and the data that we have received from them has shown that that has decreased in terms of contacts about taste complaints. That is predominantly the main area of activity that was really just to speak to Scottish Water and try to update what they are doing, make sure that they have in place the right levels of monitoring, that they are still engaging with customers and continuing with sampling when customers are concerned. So have the pH levels improved? The stability has improved. Not that it was widely varying but that it was something that they highlighted that they wanted to improve. You will be aware that the petitioner wrote with a further submission on 8 March 2018 stating that we have shown that between 2012 and 2017 parameters set by the EU of taste and order inverted commas acceptable to consumer and no abnormal change, closed inverted commas were not adhered to and it took an independent survey for Scottish Water to acknowledge that. The DWQR did not ensure that Scottish Water complied. How would you respond to that criticism that the DWQR did not hold Scottish Water to account between 2012 and 2017? In 2012, when the new treatment process came on, we were very much aware that there were concerns regarding the taste. We audited the treatment process and reviewed Scottish Water sample data. One of my inspectors went to site but also went to service reservoirs looking at chlorine residuals and tasted the water. We found that we were concerned over how Scottish Water had introduced that treatment works into supply and had gone into supply with quite a high chlorine residual that raised concerns. We suggested that that was something that they improved for future new treatment processes that were coming online. We also thought that they could have been had a much improved consumer engagement over the introduction of that process. It was my understanding that the number of contacts had decreased. We received summary data on the number of customer contacts from Scottish Water and that hadn't specifically stood out to us. It's fair to say that one of the learning points for us has been to focus more on customer contact data regarding taste. We tend to do quite detailed analysis on discoloration and look at pockets of concerns over discoloration. That was a learning point that we took from that was to look in more detail at that level of contacts in specific areas. In my area of ASU, there was quite a fuss about the introduction of chloramination. My colleague Mark Russell will also deal with that. Do you think that there are lessons to be let in by Scottish Water in regard to better informing their customers about how they are proceeding in my part? I think so. When I looked at the information that had been provided, I thought that that could have been clearer as to the reason why for the introduction of chloramination. That was done quite quickly. Obviously, Scottish Water had known that it intended to chloraminate for quite some time, but that communication with customers is probably for the reasons that need people, particularly the issue with people needing to change the treatment chemical they use if they keep fish to be quite close to the time. However, I don't think that they engage particularly with, for example, community councils. Perhaps there are some learning points for them in how they do that in advance of a change. Will you be putting in place a request for them to change their practice and that regard? They have already committed to doing that. I had a follow-up meeting with the chief executive and director of corporate affairs and communication. They talked to me about what changes they were going to put in place when they were next making a change, which would be more engagement at community council level. They also involved CAS in that discussion to get views from CAS over how they could improve the communication. I am content that they have taken that on board and have learned from it. I just wanted to go back to the question that I asked earlier. I was confusing two different topics, and it was a waste water plant that I was thinking about, so I had nothing to do with drinking water quality. I will not need to look into that any further. Before we round off, with regard to the petition, are you content that everything has been done to satisfy the complaints of the petitioners in regard to Strathbae and Badenoch area and the Aviemore area? With regard to their water quality, yes. My concern is that the regulations that we currently have do not seem to provide that level of reassurance. In terms of Badenoch and Strathbae, what Scottish Water has been doing, what NHS Highland has done in terms of reviewing that, I am not really sure what further steps could be taken, but there is that question in my mind, if you like, that the regulations that we have have not given that reassurance. Whether that is something that we need to consider in the longer term, whether we expand a little bit on this minimisation of disinfection by-products, whether we would choose to bring in some different additional standards to THMs, since there is now almost 30 per cent of the population received chloraminated water. Thank you very much for your time this morning. We are going to suspend the meeting briefly to allow Ms Pech to leave. Thank you very much for your time.