Sewage Leicester: Severn Trent apologises after raw waste 'bubbles' out onto village road angering residents

A water company has apologised after raw sewage spilled out onto a street in Leicester. John Eckersley, a resident living near where the discharge occurred, reported the incident to Severn Trent on Wednesday 24 January.

He said there was a “garden pond full of sewage” that was “bubbling” onto the pavement on the corner of Ashby Road and Iveshead Road in Shepshed, near Loughborough. He added that he was “absolutely stunned” that it was of “no great urgency” to Severn Trent. 

He told LeicestershireLive: “It's on my regular dog-walking route. [With] the weather being windy and rainy, it [the smell] wasn’t too bad. When you see the state of it, it is bad. Think of a garden pond full of sewage. It’s bubbling onto the pavement and then going down the road into another drain. I was very surprised to see it. But I’m absolutely stunned that it's really of no great urgency [to Severn Trent].”

He added: “I had a conversation with them that they would go to it in five days. So they didn’t really have much urgency. In a previous job I used to clean toilets out on canal boats and we were terrified of leaving anything like that out.”

Severn Trent has apologised to residents in the area and said a team was “on-site to investigate the cause of the issue”. Daniel Borst, network operations lead for Leicestershire at Severn Trent said: “We would like to apologise to residents of Ashby Road for the sewer flooding that they’ve experienced. Any type of flooding can be distressing, and a team is already on site to investigate the cause of the issue, get it resolved as quickly as possible and undertake a thorough cleanse of the affected area.”

The incident comes after new analysis from Labour has found that water company bosses have awarded themselves over £25m in bonuses and incentives since the last election despite continuously discharging “toxic” sewage into UK rivers and seas. The analysis found that nine water chief executives were paid a staggering £10m in bonuses, £14m in incentives and £603,580 in benefits since 2019. Steve Reed MP, Labour’s Shadow Environment Secretary, slammed the Conservatives for “turning a blind eye” to “corruption at the heart of the water industry”, adding that “with Labour, the polluter - not the public - will pay."