Windermere sewage spill company's profits rise

United Utilities has reported a 17.5% rise in profits for the year up to 31 March

The water firm at the centre of a pollution row at England's largest lake has announced a jump in profits for its last financial year.

Earlier this week, United Utilities was engulfed in a scandal over news of a massive sewage spill at Windermere in the Lake District in February.

The company has now reported a 17.5% rise in underlying operating profits to £517.8m in the year to 31 March.

It claimed it has "a sector-leading track record on minimising pollution for over a decade".

But on Wednesday, a fresh row broke out over the state of England's waters after reports that millions of litres of raw sewage had been pumped into Windermere.

'Completely unacceptable'

Documents from United Utilities, seen by the BBC, showed a fault at a pumping station in Bowness-on-Windermere in Cumbria left sewage being illegally pumped into the famous lake for 10 hours in February.

The situation was labelled a "scandal" by opposition politicians, while Downing Street said it was "completely unacceptable" and the Environment Agency had the power to launch a criminal prosecution if necessary.

United Utilities said on Wednesday that the spill was caused by an unexpected fault on the third party telecoms cable network in the area, "which United Utilities was not notified about and which affected both the primary system and United Utilities' backup".

It said "engineers took urgent steps to resolve the situation and we informed the Environment Agency within an hour of the pollution being confirmed".

In its full-year results announced on Thursday, United Utilities said it was bringing forward about £400m in investment to reduce spills at more than 150 storm overflows.

The group added it was moving to "accelerate environmental schemes in communities such as Windermere, where we are fast-tracking investment to drive improvements earlier".

Chief executive Louise Beardmore said the company has a business plan that "would see us investing more than ever before to improve services across the five counties of the North West".