SEWAGE flowed into England’s waterways for more than 1.87 million cumulated hours in 2025 despite drier conditions than prior years, official figures released today showed.

Nearly 300,000 incidents of untreated sewage were spilled through overflow systems into rivers, lakes and seas last year.

The practice of dumping sewage is meant to take place only in what water companies call “exceptional circumstances,” meant to prevent sewers from being overwhelmed in case of storms or heavy rain and backing up into homes.

Findings from the second year of full monitoring of the network by the Environmental Agency revealed that there were 291,492 spills of this type across England in 2025.

Despite these figures marking a reduction from the previous year, down more than a third (35 per cent) from 450,398 in 2024, campaigners have continued to slam the mismanagement of Britain’s water systems, calling for private water firms to be taken back into public control.

The total spill duration was almost halved from 3.61 million hours of sewage releases in 2024 to 1.87 million hours in 2025.

Improvements in the number of pollution incidents were due to the unusually dry conditions in 2025, as compared with 2024 when it rained significantly more.

River Action chief executive James Wallace said these new figures furthered the case for public management of water services.

He told the Morning Star: “Water companies cannot hide behind rain clouds. We must not be fooled that everything is better just because the weather was dry.

“Nothing has changed: corporations are fouling our rivers for profit and the regulators let it happen. 

“The government must take back control of water company ownership and investment, putting public benefit and environmental performance first.

“Starting with Thames Water, they should use the Special Administration Regime to make sure bill payers’ money fixes leaks rather than lines pockets.”

Campaign group Surfers Against Sewage said its own analysis put more than 187,000 hours of spills on “dry days.”

Water minister Emma Hardy said there was “still an unacceptable amount of sewage entering our waterways and a long way to go in cleaning up our rivers, lakes and seas.”

Water UK, the industry’s representative body, recognised the role that drier weather played, while claiming the reduction in pollution incidents was in part due to water companies tripling their investment in the network.