Over 300,000 sewage spills in UK rivers and seas last year with vast majority illegal, court hears

Water companies discharged raw sewage into UK rivers and seas through storm overflows more than 300,000 times last year - the vast majority of which were illegal, according to new data presented to the high court.

The court heard that in 2022, 52% of raw sewage discharges from 14,000 storm overflows that were monitored spilled more than 10 times and 11% discharged waste more than 60 times, making it in breach of the law.

David Forsdick KC, representing the environmental group WildFish, said 75% of the discharges into waterways were because of a lack of hydraulic capacity at treatment works.

The high court heard that most of the raw sewage discharges from storm overflows had been illegal for decades as they are only supposed to be used in exceptional circumstances, such as unusually high rainfall to release pressure on the sewer network.

The data on sewage has yet to be published by the Environment Agency but did reveal that the amount of raw waste being dumped by water companies had reduced.

In 2022 water firms pumped raw sewage into rivers and the sea from storm overflows 301,000 times, over 1.75 million hours compared to 372,533 discharges over 2.7 million hours in 2021.

WildFish is challenging the government’s new £56 billion plan to reduce the scale of storm overflows, demanding water companies must pay to fix illegal sewage discharges rather than customers having to foot the bill through hikes to their water bills.

It has been reported that millions of households could see their yearly water bills rise by up to 40% as water companies draw up plans to tackle the cost of meeting strict targets to tackle the sewage crisis. It could result in water bills increasing by about £450 to £680, plus inflation, in parts of the country.

Angler Matt Marlow, from Stockport, Greater Manchester, said he will “never pay” towards the industry’s sewer upgrade plan because “they’re all rubbing their hands together while we’re swimming in s***”.

Lawyers for WildFish say water companies are in breach of compliance rules and must pay.

Nick Measham, the chief executive of WildFish, said: “It is time for the government to … make the water companies do what they have promised to do, and have been required to do by law, for nearly 30 years. This must be at their own expense. Our wild fish, our rivers and all of us have had enough.”

The new figures come as Thames Water was fined £3.34 million for dumping millions of litres of sewage into rivers near Gatwick killing 1,700 fish.

Judge Laing KC told Lewes crown court the company had deliberately misled the Environment Agency during its investigation and had allowed untreated sewage to pour into the rivers illegally.

The court heard there was a “significant and lengthy” period of polluting the Gatwick Stream and River Mole between Crawley in West Sussex and Horley in Surrey on 11 October 2017.

Cathryn Ross, the interim co-CEO of Thames Water, said the firm is “deeply sorry for the entirely unacceptable pollution incident” which “occurred due to the running of a storm pump in error.”

She added: “I would also like to express my sincere apologies for those aspects of our response to the incident six years ago that led to the finding that we misled the regulator. We fully accept that we made significant errors and exercised poor judgment at the time, and we are genuinely sorry for that.”

In response to the incident the company said it had made significant steps including committing £32.9 million to a site improvement plan and better staff training.

Jim McMahon, the shadow environment secretary, said the “significant fine highlights the seriousness of the offence” but “it shouldn’t have taken five years to get to this point”.

He added: “Which is why Labour’s plan for water would deliver automatic fines for sewage discharges.”

Thames Water has recently come under fire after the CEO, Sarah Bentley, quit after promising to forgo her bonus due to mounting public outrage over the lack of action on sewage spills. Following this, emergency plans were drawn up for the possible collapse of the firm as it was reported that its debt had reached a whopping £14 billion.

AlixPartners, a financial advisory and global consulting firm, is said to be advising Thames Water on turnaround plans.

Ofwat CEO David Black told House of Lords peers on Tuesday (4 July) that the whole of the water sector had levels of debt that were too high and Thames Water would have to raise billions more from its shareholders to keep afloat.