Raw sewage dumped into England’s rivers over 800 times a day - and hundreds of sites still unmonitored

Raw sewage dumped into rivers across England occurs more than 800 times a day, official data will reveal.

Figures due to be published by the Environment Agency on Friday (31 March) are expected to show the number of sewage spills stood at 300,953 last year -  however this was a fifth less compared to 2021.

The amount of time untreated sewage was released into waterways last year also fell by 34% from 2021 – but was still at 1.7 million hours, according to preliminary data seen by The Times.

Last year’s reductions appear to be due to a combination of improvements by water firms and a dry year with a months-long drought last summer.

Stuart Colville, director of strategy at industry body Water UK, said the results “are an important milestone, but leave a lot more to do.”

Hundreds of locations are still unmonitored including in the constituency of environment secretary Thérèse Coffey. The amount of sewage pollution being dumped into rivers across England remains unseen at more than 600 sites according to freedom of information requests. This means the true number of annual spills could be much higher.

Under a government deadline, all of the nearly 15,000 storm overflows across the nation must have monitoring by the end of the year.

Anglian Water has the lowest percentage of monitoring, with just 86% of its 1,552 overflows being watched. One unmonitored site is at Halesworth Bridge in Suffolk Coastal, Coffey’s constituency.

A company spokesman said: “Those overflows that are near more sensitive sites or were more likely to spill were monitored first.”

United Utilities is the poorest performer in absolute numbers with the firm having 250 sites yet to have monitors, while the best performer is Severn Trent, reaching 100% monitoring by the end of last year - 12 months ahead of the government’s deadline.

Amy Slack, campaigns manager at the charity River Action told The Times: “The government has let water companies monitor themselves and pollute behind closed doors for decades while defunding regulators that fail to enforce the law. The result: more than 600 sewage overflows free to pollute our rivers and seas unchecked.”

“Without transparent monitoring and severe penalties, profiteering water companies will continue to put public health and water security at risk.”

A spokesman from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said in a statement: “We have brought in comprehensive monitoring, driven increased investment and are taking tougher enforcement on those companies that breach their permits to ensure that polluters are held to account.”

Ash Smith, of the Oxfordshire-based charity Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, commented on the results of the data saying it was “great” the numbers “are down a bit”, but it is still “way too high”.