Southern Water fined £7.1m for sewage pollution

Southern Water fined £7.1m for sewage pollution
Beaches forced to close, local trade hit, equipment failure and lack of oversight by company.
Southern Water has been fined £7.1m after repeated illegal sewage pollution incidents forced the closure of beaches, harmed coastal communities. Serious failures were exposed in the company’s management of wastewater.
Sentencing Southern Water at Canterbury crown court today, Mr Justice Johnson KC heard how preventable equipment failures and poor operational oversight led to repeated discharges of untreated sewage between 2019 and 2021, some at the height of summer.
The prosecution comes almost exactly five years after Southern Water received a record £90 million fine for nearly 7,000 illegal sewage discharges.
Across five major pollution incidents, Southern Water repeatedly failed to maintain critical pumping equipment, delayed reporting pollution to regulators and allowed untreated sewage to enter coastal waters.
In June 2019, an Environment Agency investigation found that around 10m litres of sewage was discharged for almost 24 hours. It could have been prevented but staff showed a lack of system knowledge.
Southern Water is legally obliged to report pollution to the Environment Agency as soon as possible, but they failed to do so until the next day. It meant Thanet District Council couldn’t warn people against getting into the water.
More discharges
Little over a year later, around the August bank holiday in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, another illegal discharge.
A failed pump at Margate pumping station was out of order for weeks, leading to the release of sewage into the sea. A second pump then failed. At least 16m litres of sewage were released into the sea across two days. Like earlier, the Environment Agency was only told by Southern Water about the pollution a day later.
On that same August day six years ago, untreated wastewater and human waste was also discharged into seawater from a pumping station at Broadstairs, in the region of 1.6m to 3.2m litres, for more than two hours.
Late reporting
Southern Water only told the Environment Agency weeks later. Their failure to report it sooner meant Thanet District Council was again unable to warn the public.
Lindsay Faulkner, environment manager for the Environment Agency in Kent, said:
Southern Water allowed this repeated pollution to happen. Stronger oversight by the company is needed, and plain to see from their track record. These preventable incidents harmed the environment and local communities, but like so much pollution caused by water companies, they were avoidable and should never have happened.
The Environment Agency demands much more from Southern Water. Our inspections of sewage treatment sites, including pumping stations at fault in this case, will continue. We are holding them to account.
Skip to February 2021, another pumping station fault, more pollution. Now a computer broke down at Broadstairs, as did a back-up. This time, the Environment Agency was told about sewage and debris off the coast, and both they and the council gave advice to swimmers to stay away from a 5km-stretch of Kent coastline for 24 hours.
The Environment Agency told the court Southern Water should have picked up the fault earlier, a fairly basic diagnosis.
Possibly the most damaging of the five main incidents leading the Environment Agency’s case, as far as the impact on beaches and bathing waters, came in June the following summer. Again, simultaneous failures at Margate and Broadstairs pumping stations, when after lockdown, everyone was desperate to get outdoors.
As the sun rose, Thanet District Council closed 11 of them. Advice to keep out of the sea for a week at the height of summer was also posted on Swimfo, the Environment Agency’s online guide to bathing water quality.
Equipment breakdown sent more sewage and debris into the sea for hours. A poorly-maintained circuit board caused the power supply to stop, causing a domino effect for the rest of the plant.
October 2021, and more badly-managed equipment caused a power shutdown at the Broadstairs plant, with more untreated sewage and sanitary towels pumped into the sea. In all, 10 beaches were closed by the council.
Southern Water also admitted to another 35 illegal discharges also between 2019 and 2021, and that a pump used to move sewage around its network was out of action for more than a year. They were fined £7,127,083, with costs to the Environment Agency of £149,000, and a victim surcharge of £181.
Notes to editors:
The Environment Agency charged Southern Water with 13 offences, all contrary to regulations 12(1)(b) and 38(1)(a) of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016.
In 2021, Southern Water was fined £90m for 6,971 illegal sewage discharges off Hampshire, Kent and Sussex. Three years later, the penalty was £330,000 for pollution in a lake near Southampton.
The Environment Agency is also prosecuting Southern Water for other pollution incidents in Kent between 2019 and 2021, including at Faversham and Whitstable, and in Hampshire in 2023, with sentencing to follow later this year.
Since 2015, the Environment Agency has concluded more than 70 prosecutions against water and sewerage companies, securing fines exceeding £153 million as part of its continued action against serious environmental offending.
ENDS.