Record high in sewage spills to spark calls for watchdog to act

SEWAGE spills rose to a record high last year, data from the Environment Agency released today will show.

The number of releases topped more than 477,000 over four million hours in 2023, according to early estimates from the agency, representing a 58 per cent rise on the previous year.

Final figures are expected to be slightly lower, but will still show that last year saw the highest number of spills in England since monitoring of sewage outflows began in 2016.

Last year, there were 301,091 spills, a drop on 2021 that the Government said was largely due to dry weather.

The water industry is expected to point to the fact that last year was the sixth wettest in England since Met Office records began in 1836.

Water companies are permitted to release sewage into rivers and seas during exceptional circumstances. But the regularity of spills has led to criticism that the industry has failed to invest in infrastructure to cope with changing weather and increasing population.

The Environment Agency is conducting the largest-ever criminal investigation into potential widespread non-compliance by water and sewerage companies.

The rise this year can also be partly attributed to increased monitoring, with 100 per cent of known storm overflows now fitted with monitors, up from 91 per cent the previous year.

But the new figures will likely put further pressure on the Government to act on sewage spills, which it has said will take until 2050 to fix. Responding to the figures, James Wallace, the chief executive of charity River Action, said the scale of the discharges was “a final indictment of a failing industry”.

“Having run amok with bill payers’ money for decades, they discharged untreated sewage into rivers and coastal waters for more than four million hours last year from nearly 500,000 spills through storm overflows that are supposed to be only used in extreme weather events.”

Last year, the industry apologised for the first time for dumping sewage, but said tens of billions of investment via household bills would be required for the modernisation of sewers.

Water companies have asked Ofwat to approve bill rises of an average 40 per cent over the next decade to cover the cost of new infrastructure.

The Government has introduced several new measures to clamp down on sewage spills and tighten regulations in recent weeks, including a hotline it announced yesterday.

‘A final indictment of a failing industry ... having run amok with bill payers’ money for decades’