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Serious water pollution incidents up 60% in England

Serious pollution incidents by water companies were up 60% last year, according to the latest data from the government......In 2024, there were 2,801 number of such events, the highest on record, compared with 2,174 in 2023. Of these, 75 were the most serious, posing harm to fisheries, drinking water and human health.Just three companies were responsible for the vast majority - Thames Water (33), Southern Water (15) and Yorkshire Water (13)......Many incidents are reported to the Environment Agency by the companies themselves, but of the 4,000 inspections carried out last year by the regulator it found nearly a quarter of sites were in breach of their permits.Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, which published its report into the sector on Tuesday, strongly criticised the government and Agency for not doing more."Regulators are overwhelmed by the number of prosecutions and appear unable to deter companies from acting unlawfully. Government must act now to strengthen regulators and support their efforts to hold companies to account," he said.The Committee said that the continued incidents are a result of the regulators - the Environment Agency and Ofwat - "fail[ing] to ensure water companies maintain vital infrastructure".It estimated that at current rates it would take companies 700 years to replace the entire water mains network.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg5zl75dmm0o

Ivonne Holliday ● 18h3 Comments

Agreed that the whole privatisation is an awful mess. But rather than bail them out as the government seems to be planning to do, with billions of our money being added to the public debt, I wish the government would summon up the courage to let Thames Water go bankrupt. The investors would then carry the can - after all, "the value of your investments can go down as well as up."

Richard Carter ● 8h

I agree with you, Jonathan.  Turning public utilities into private monopolies and leaving them under (or not) regulated was a horrible mistake.That was over 35 years ago.  I would have thought that regulations could and should have been changed to ensure appropriate service.  Nothing is stopping this government now from doing so.  I just wish they would get their skates on!The otherr indefensible thing that happened during the last government is that, through a vote in Parliament, they authorized the water companies to discharge sewage into lakes, rivers and seas when there was too much rainfall.  Sadly, the last condition fell into deaf ears.

Ivonne Holliday ● 16h

The privatisation of the water industry is now quite clearly the most catastrophic of all the privatisations.  Turning public utilities into private monopolies and left them under-regulated and fully exposed to the worst of the financial engineering available to private equity and similar industries.  They have all been loaded with debt, paid huge dividends to their private shareholders and done th absolute minimum to invest in upgrading the water pipe networks, build new reservoirs and all the other things that a well-regulated public utility might have been expected to do.The only solutions at this stage will be expensive and I am not sure there is room in the stretched public finances to fund the scale of investment clearly needed. And our water bills are already rising at rates well ahead of inflation.  I am sure that restricting dividends, capping interest rates and capping executive pay will all help but will not be enough alone to sort the mess out.  The regulators have failed too but they have been quite deliberately under-resourced from the outset.  "The unacceptable face of capitalism" indeed!

Jonathan Callaway ● 18h