Fining firms for sewage spills will get 'quicker and easier', says government

Under the new proposals water companies could face automatic fines for some rule breaches

Fining English water companies for spilling raw sewage will soon become quicker and easier, the government has said.

New proposals would see automatic fines of up to £20,000 issued for some minor offences and make it simpler to punish more serious ones.

In recent years data from the water industry's own monitoring equipment has shown how frequently rules are broken around sewage spills. But the regulator, the Environment Agency, has by its own admission struggled to act.

"I want to give the Environment Agency the teeth it needs to tackle all rule breaking," said Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds, announcing the proposals.

"With new, automatic and tougher penalties for water companies, there will be swift consequences for offences – including not treating sewage to the required standard, and maintenance failures," she said.

The plans will be put to a six-week public consultation starting on Wednesday.

The English water companies welcomed the proposals, with a spokesperson for trade body Water UK saying: "It is right that water companies are held to account when things go wrong."

Water companies are only supposed to spill raw sewage under specific exceptional conditions like very heavy rain.

In recent years the fitting of monitors to all sewage outflows in England has highlighted just how much raw sewage is being discharged, and how few of the rule breaches lead to the Environment Agency taking action.

BBC News investigations have identified thousands of occasions when sewage was spilled during dry weather and occasions when treatment works released sewage before they treated their legally stipulated volume.

A recent BBC report revealed that the EA attended just 13% of reported pollution incidents and often had to rely on information from the water companies themselves.

The government says it's expecting the new system to raise between £50m and £67m each year but it is hoping the policy will make the water companies change their ways. If fines are levied, the government says shareholders will have to cover the cost and it won't be added to customer water bills.

For the most serious pollution offences, the enforcement system remains the same. The EA has to take water companies to court and prove to a criminal standard that an offence has been committed "beyond a reasonable doubt". If that prosecution results in a conviction the company could have to pay a large fine, possibly in the millions of pounds.

The new proposals are focused on more minor offences which happen frequently and have in the past gone largely unpunished.

The plans would see automatic financial penalties of up to £20,000 introduced for rule breaches such as failure to report a significant pollution incident within four hours, failure to report spill data properly or if emergency overflow outlets discharge sewage more than three times in a year.

For some more serious offences the government wants to make it easier for the EA to take action.

So it's proposing that the burden of proof be reduced from "beyond all reasonable doubt" - the norm for criminal proceedings - to "on the balance of probabilities", which is used in civil cases. The fines which the EA can impose without going to court could be increased to a maximum of half a million pounds.

The reduced burden of proof for some offences is already written into law, having been part of the Water (Special Measures) Act which received Royal Assent in February 2025. This six-week consultation is to determine which offences should be included, and the level of the fines.

"Fines of £500,000 are pocket change to billion-pound companies like Thames Water," says James Wallace, the CEO of campaign group River Action.

"Higher penalties and urgent, wholesale reform are essential to prevent negligent firms polluting our rivers and short-changing their customers."

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