Southern Water: 'Biggest offender' for pollution, says report

In Sussex, beach huts were damaged after a sewage spill near Bulverhythe beach, Hastings, in August

Southern Water is the "biggest offender" for sewage pollution, a report says.

Environmental campaigners, Surfers Against Sewage, say Southern Water had 1,949 sewage discharges across the 2021 bathing season.

Companies across England and Wales issued more than 5,500 sewage discharge alerts in the last year, it added.

Southern Water acknowledged they "had to improve" and plan to invest £2bn to cut pollution by 2025.

Crowds gathered at Southern Water's HQ earlier this month to protest against sewage leaks and call for the service to be renationalised.

It comes after the firm received a record fine of £90m earlier this year for dumping sewage in the sea between 2010 and 2015.

The report said "technical failures" in 2020 meant Southern Water had problems issuing sewage discharge notifications that year which resulted in 2021's figures "skyrocketing", with 1,949 notifications in 2021 compared to 78 in 2020 and 690 in 2019.

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Dr Toby Willison, director of environment and corporate affairs at Southern Water, said: "We share the passion and commitment of Surfers Against Sewage to protect our precious coastal water and the 700 miles of coastline in our region.

"We know our performance has to improve and we are driving a step change in investment spending £2 billion to cut pollution incidents by 80% by 2025."

Southern Water added that their new task force aims to cut storm overflows by 80% by 2030.

Campaigners gathered at Southern Water's headquarters earlier this month

In October, Thanet District Council, in Kent, warned the public not to go in the sea or below the high water line at 14 beaches due to pollution, after storms damaged a pumping station in Broadstairs leading to waste water releases.

The Surfers Against Sewage water quality report says Southern Water's sewage discharges, per location, were dramatically higher than other companies.

It added, water companies, on average, see between two and eight sewage discharges per location annually, but Southern Water reported 38 per location in 2020.

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