Northumbrian Water urged to 'completely reform' over sewage leaks

NWL was fined £540,000 for polluting Heads Hope Burn in Castle Eden, County Durham, in 2017

Northumbrian Water (NWL) should be "completely reformed" a prospective MP has said, amid anger over raw sewage dumped into rivers.

Last month firms across England apologised for acting too slowly to prevent leaks and discharges.

Mark Ridyard, Newcastle East Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate said the apology was "too little too late".

NWL said it had the "lowest level of pollutions" in the country, but even so was "striving to do better".

Anger over the contamination of rivers and seas by untreated sewage has been increasing, with campaign group Surfers Against Sewage releasing figures showing there were 963 hours of discharges into bathing waters across the Northumbrian Water area in 2022.

It is a national problem. In 2022, raw sewage was dumped into England's rivers and seas for 1.75 million hours - or 825 times a day on average.

Mr Ridyard said "large-scale environmental damage" had continued for years.

"Protecting the environment should be more important than making overseas investors rich and richly rewarding directors' failure," he said.

"This apology means nothing unless the firm is completely reformed from top to bottom."

After being fined in 2017 NWL said "many changes and improvements" had been made

Accounts for the year ending March 31, 2022 showed that it paid out an interim dividend of £58.2m and a final dividend of £55.4m to its Hong Kong-based owner,  CK Infrastructure Holdings, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

In May, water companies in England warned that bills would likely have to rise to pay for a £1.7bn plan to tackle sewage spills.

Northumberland Labour group leader Scott Dickinson said last week it was "outrageous" that households should have to pay for modernisation work while millions of pounds were paid to shareholders.

NWL said it had the "lowest level of pollutions" in the country and the highest possible performance rating from the Environment Agency.

"But we know we need to do more and we are investing more than £80m towards reducing our use of storm overflows and upgrading our wastewater network," a spokesperson said.

"From 2025 to 2030 we will invest a further £1.7bn in a massive environmental programme to stop storm overflow spills and improve the environment."