CAMPAIGNERS have demanded a ban on bonuses for water company bosses after it emerged that sewage spills more than doubled last year.
More than 3.6 million hours of raw sewage discharges poured into rivers and seas last year, the Environment Agency said yesterday – a 105 per cent increase compared to the previous 12 months.
Sewage discharged from storm overflows, which dump untreated sewage during heavy rainfall to stop sewers backing up, increased by 54 per cent, from 301,091 to 464,056 spills.
Environment Agency director of water Helen Wakeham said the figures were “sadly not surprising.”
Water companies have pledged to invest £10 billion to tackle the problem, but customers are set to carry the burden as their costs are passed on via bill increases.
River Action chief executive James Wallace said the scale of the discharges was “a final indictment of a failing industry” after “having run amok with billpayers’ money for decades.”
Labour called for an immediate ban on bonuses for water bosses –arguing that executives have awarded themselves more than £25 million in bonuses and incentives since the last election.
The Environment Agency has called for jail sentences for polluting water bosses as well as bonus bans.
GMB national officer Gary Carter said it was “completely grotesque” that shareholders trouser fortunes “while England’s beautiful waterways are fouled with effluent.”
He said: “The whole water sector is in a complete mess thanks to the perverse incentives of privatisation – it needs a total overhaul.”
The figures showed an average of 33 instances of sewage spills per storm overflow in England last year, up from 23 in 2022.
The number of bathing waters in England receiving a classification of “poor” were also at their highest since 2015.
Surfers Against Sewage chief executive Giles Bristow said the statistics amounted to “another total shitshow from the greedy, incompetent mess that is our water industry.”
He called on “spineless” authorities to “finally see the industry’s promises for the smokescreen that they are.”
Greenpeace UK policy director Dr Doug Parr demanded a “block on all water company dividends and bonuses until we see real improvements, and we need it now, while we still have some river ecosystems to protect.”
And Rachel Wyatt, of the Marine Conservation Society, said rivers and seas are “being polluted with a cocktail of harmful chemicals, bacteria, and microplastics.”
She said: “It is clear from these findings that water companies must urgently improve sewage infrastructure and that government and regulators must do more to stop them from discharging raw sewage.”
