Anglian Water reports biggest rise in sewage discharges

Anglian Water operates more than 1,100 water recycling centres

Anglian Water has recorded the biggest increase in raw sewage discharges of all of England's water companies, according to figures from the Environment Agency.

Data showed pumps across Norfolk ran for a total of 4,300 hours - or 179 days - from 40 outfalls in 2023.

Councils in Norfolk where pumping stations are located have called on the company to end the practice.

Anglian Water said figures increased because the company now monitored 100% of discharges, and 2023 saw many incidences of heavy rain overwhelm sewers.

Regan Harris, from Anglian Water, said: "There's a couple of reasons why we've seen such an increase in storm spills data for the last year.

"The first thing is this last 12 months have been exceptionally wet so our storm overflow system is doing what it's supposed to do and protecting homes from flooding during that extreme rainfall.

"But secondary and equally as important is the fact that we've got a third more monitors now than we had this time last year, so we we were always expecting to have higher figures; more amounts of data than we had last year."

The company said its figures looked worse than other sewage treatment firms because it had installed monitors at all its sites before other firms did.

Kevin Wood, chairman of Caister Parish Council, is worried the number of sewage discharges is going to get worse

Kevin Wood, chairman of Caister Parish Council, said not enough was being done to tackle the problem.

The village has a large sewage treatment works serving Great Yarmouth and the villages in the north of the parish, where there are thousands of holiday chalets and caravans.

The local outfall, a pipe that discharges over a mile out to sea, was used 106 times in 2023, for more than 560 hours, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Mr Wood said: "The number of new builds across the northern parishes has not helped.

"With the potential of a further 4,000 houses to be built in the northern parishes, that's going to increase the situation even further.

"Our belief as a parish [council] is not enough is being done to alleviate this problem."

Sewage spills can be contaminated by human waste, wet wipes and sanitary products, which can pose a serious risk to wildlife, swimmers and others who use UK waterways.

In a statement, the Environment Agency said: "Storm overflow spills are measured by event duration monitors and 100% of storm overflows across the water network are now fitted with these, meeting the target set by the government to do so by the end of 2023."