Southern Water's £10m Margate investment aims to curb sewage discharges

Margate's sewage works and pumping station have been overhauled

Southern Water is about to complete £10m of improvements to a sewage treatment works at the scene of a major spill a decade ago.

The company, which supplies and treats water in much of southern England, has overhauled its Margate plant, where a leak in 2012 forced beaches to close.

It was fined £200,000 for that and then a record £90m in 2021 for deliberately pumping sewage into the sea.

The firm insists it has changed not only its equipment but its behaviour.

Unveiling the transformation at the Margate sewage treatment works, project manager Jon Yates said: "We have carried out a wholesale review and a real behavioural change in the way we do things, in terms of the assets that we have but also from a people point of view."

The overhaul includes a new computer system and pumps

The improvements follow a pledge by the firm's director of environment, Dr Toby Willison, last year to spend £2bn "to cut pollution incidents" by 80% by 2025.

In the same year a report by environmental campaigners Surfers Against Sewage identified Southern as the "biggest offender" for sewage pollution in England and Wales.

Southern's chief executive, Ian McAulay, told a committee of MPs a number of staff had been sacked in the wake of its prosecution by the Environment Agency, which led to the record fine.

Mr McAulay admitted almost 7,000 spills of raw sewage from sites in Hampshire, Kent and West Sussex between 2010 and 2015 had been deliberate.

On Monday the company said a discharge of sewage into the sea at Eastbourne at the weekend had been the result of an electrical fault.

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