Good Morning Britain's Kate Garraway halts ITV show for breaking news (2025)

On Thursday's Good Morning Britain, ITV viewers were given a breaking news update by Kate Garraway

Good Morning Britain's Kate Garraway halted Thursday's show to bring ITV viewers some breaking news. During her news bulletin, the presenter spoke about an enforcement package being given to Yorkshire.

She said: "Some breaking news for you now: the water regulator Ofwat has announced Yorkshire Water is to pay a £40m enforcement package after it found failings in how the company maintained its sewage network.

"Most of the money will be put towards work on the company's most problematic storm overflows to ensure they spill less than 20 times a year."

Kate informed viewers that Ofwat had declared the cost would be paid by Yorkshire Water and its shareholders, not passed on to customers.

In a statement, Lynn Parker, Senior Director for Enforcement at Ofwat, said: "Our investigation has found serious failures in how Yorkshire Water has operated and maintained its sewage works and networks, which has resulted in excessive spills from storm overflows. This is a significant breach and is unacceptable."

The statement continued that Ofwat was pleased Yorkshire Water recognised the failure and was taking the steps to put things right for their customers.

Speaking about Yorkshire Water customers, she added: "They deserve credit for stepping up and agreeing an enforcement package with us that will help get things back on track as soon as possible.

"These commitments will contribute to the company delivering on its promises for cleaner rivers and seas. We now expect them to move at pace to correct the remaining issues our investigation has identified.

"We hope more companies will follow this example so that the public sees transformative change across the sector."

On Ofwat's official X page, the water regulator told their customers they've been investigating all 11 wastewater companies in England and Wales.

A post on their account reads: "They've been looking into how they operate and manage their sewage treatment works and networks. The public wants to see transformative change - it is why we are acting to hold water companies to account for their past failures."

Speaking on behalf of The Great Yorkshire Rivers Partnership, a spokesperson said the additional funding was welcome to support their vision to deliver change within the Yorkshire landscape.

They said: "Our mission is to address all significant barriers to fish migration in Yorkshire’s rivers. This helps nature restore natural river processes, improve water quality and promote biodiversity to create better blue spaces for both nature and people.

"By reinvesting this money in Yorkshire, even more projects will be delivered by Great Yorkshire Rivers partners across the county to support the recovery of our native fish species.”

Nicola Shaw, Chief Executive of Yorkshire Water, commented: “We know our storm overflows operate more frequently than we, or our customers, would like them to. Since 2021, we’ve been actively taking steps to improve our performance. We began remedying all the issues that had been identified, during Ofwat’s investigation, at our wastewater treatment works, and then took the additional decision to start our £180m investment programme to reduce discharges further.

"We’ve now completed work at 70 storm overflows and we’re about to start our £1.5bn programme to reduce discharges even further over the next five years. We know there’s still more for us to do. We’re at the forefront of the industry to get this resolved and we’re looking forward to delivering our ambitious plans to improve river health in Yorkshire.

"We apologise for our past mistakes and hope this redress package goes some way to show our commitment to improving the environment. The overflows we’ll be investing in will be ones that were due to receive investment in the 2030-35 period and we’ll be accelerating improvements to them. We are pleased that Ofwat understands the importance of this money staying within our region to help fund vital environmental improvements that will have real benefits for the customers of Yorkshire.”

Good Morning Britain continues weekdays on ITV from 6am.