As water bills soar, activists fight to keep Britain’s rivers clean

Fed up of a lack of government action, campaigners are taking matters into their own hands against water firms.

Paul Powlesland in front of a Thames Water sewage outfall on the Roding. Pic: John Lubbock

The water industry has been in dire straits for some time. Thames Water is not only on the brink of running out of money, needing a £3 billion loan to stay afloat, their own data also revealed raw sewage discharges into rivers rose 50 per cent in 2024. And it’s not only Thames Water that is accused of mismanagement and a lack of investment. Across the country, people are fed up with inertia from the government and the Water Services Regulation Authority [Ofwat].

Empowered by a supreme court ruling in July last year – that allows those with ownership rights over water courses to bring legal cases against water companies for dumping sewage – activists are pushing to make water companies clean up their act. As the new financial year brings price hikes in water bills of £123 on average, The Lead spoke to some of those fighting for change:

Environmental lawyer Paul Powlesland lives on a houseboat by the River Roding, a tributary of the Thames that snakes through East London via Barking, Ilford, Wanstead and Epping. He does pro bono work for environmental campaigns and runs the River Roding Trust, which he set up to protect the river he calls home. Last year, Powlesland made headlines when he took a jury oath on a vial of water from the Roding instead of a religious book.

Powlesland has been living on the river for almost a decade, and has rights as a ‘riparian owner’ due to the presence of his houseboat and moorings on the river. “I’m holding it on trust for nature,” he says. “I don’t want to build on the reedbed because that’s a valuable habitat, but I keep it clean, I make sure other people don’t damage or steal it.”

It is July 2024, and Paul is telling me about the implications of the Manchester Ship Canal legal judgement which establishes the right to bring private prosecutions against water companies: “United Utilities were just discharging sewage illegally into [the canal], and Manchester Ship Canal was saying that’s a nuisance which they have an action for.”

Paul describes how United Utilities tried to argue that the canal owner could not bring a common law claim because sewage discharging is covered in statute by the Water Industry Act’s regulatory regime. Yet the enforcement of this regime has broken down, because of the underfunding of Ofwat and the Environment Agency.

Powlesland points out that Just Stop Oil activists were convicted of conspiracy to cause public nuisance, and that it is possible to argue that water companies are also guilty of committing a public nuisance by illegally discharging sewage. Because this is a criminal, not a civil offence, it must be brought by the state, and Powlesland says that the government should consider taking water companies to court. The fact that it chooses to prosecute climate activists but not water companies suggests that “the state is deliberately targeting climate activists,” according to Powlesland.

So far, Labour have proposed only half measures to deal with the crisis facing the water industry. A new bill proposes to “strengthen significantly the power of the water industry regulators and will deliver on the government’s commitment to put failing water companies under special measures”. But they are refusing to consider nationalising failing companies, even using research paid for by water companies in 2018 to argue against it in a letter to campaigners.

Powlesland in front of a Thames Water sewage outfall on the Roding. Pic: John Lubbock

The Environment Agency is supposed to monitor illegal discharges, but Powlesland shows me a sewage vent on the Roding where a metal grill is encrusted with wet wipes and other detritus. Cuts to Defra under the Conservative Party have not been reversed under Labour, meaning the Environment Agency [EA] lacks the resources to monitor sewage outflows. Powlesland is effectively doing what the EA lacks the capacity for, and it is yielding results. He wrote to Thames Water demanding they employ a sewage officer to monitor outflows on the Roding. The company has now, to Powlesland’s surprise, agreed to do this.

Paul said in the past week work had begun to fix the four-year problem with the sewage on the River Roding.

A Thames Water spokesperson said “In 2024 parts of our region experienced some of the wettest months in 250 years. This overwhelmed our sewer network which resulted in diluted wastewater being released into rivers. While all storm discharges are unacceptable, the sewage systems were designed in this way to prevent sewage backing up into people’s homes.”

“Over the next five years we will deliver a record amount of investment across our network. This includes £1.8 billion to improve river health in London and plans to upgrade over 250 of our storm overflows to lower the number of storm discharges, such as our Beckton sewage treatment works in East London, which is being upgraded at a cost of £185 million. In addition, the newly completed Tideway Tunnel will reduce the volume of untreated sewage previously entering the tidal Thames in a typical year by 95%.”

You don’t need to be a lawyer to take action against sewage dumping. In 2023, retired physiotherapist Jo Bateman stopped paying the sewage part of her bill to South West Water [SWW]. Sewage discharging had made it impossible at times for her to swim in the sea near her home in Exmouth, Dorset.

Repeatedly refusing to pay a water bill can damage a person’s credit rating, but Jo didn’t have a mortgage so she decided to risk it in order to take a stand against her water company.

“I just was thinking, this isn't enough. I need to do something else. And I decided that I would sue them through the small claims court,” Jo says.

Bateman taking a dip in the sea near Exmouth, Dorset. Image courtesy of Jo Bateman

She had used the small claims court before, and issued her own claim there in January 2024. She used data she had collected on rainfall and sewage spills in her area in 2023, cross referencing the data to show days on which there had been insufficient rain to justify the sewage dumps occurring. She claimed expenses for around 120 days in which she was prevented from swimming in the sea, which came to approximately £300, based on the cost of swimming in a local swimming pool.

South West Water submitted a poor legal defence, according to Jo, because they thought her case didn’t stand a chance. But then law firm Leigh Day offered to represent her pro bono, and modified her claim to concentrate on a 10-day period in December 2023 to January 2024 where a burst rising main in Exmouth caused a significant sewage spill. Based on these 10 days of not being able to swim in the sea, Jo’s claim came to only £60, but the money wasn’t the point: the point was to show that water companies could be held liable for their sewage dumping.

SWW started to take the claim seriously, and hired their own legal team. But before it came to court, the Manchester Ship Canal ruling showed that water companies could be liable to claims by individuals.

Jo’s case mirrors that of Ian Cook, who took SWW to court in 1992. His case, supported by the poet Ted Hughes, sought redress for SWW’s chemical dumping along part of the River Creedy in Devon which he owned. According to the Guardian, “Everyone thought Hughes and Cook were tilting at windmills, as they cited with poetic flourish the Magna Carta in their legal argument, but Cook won his case.”

The rulings in the Manchester Ship Canal and Ian Cook cases show that it is possible for Bateman to win her case. But the wheels of justice grind slowly, and although the case is still progressing, there is currently no date for a hearing in Jo’s case against SWW.

SWW’s Managing Director of Wastewater Services, Richard Price, told The Lead that “We are one of only five companies in the industry to reduce spills compared to 2023. Our focus has been to reduce spills at beaches in the bathing season by 20% in the last five years as we continue to focus on what our customers care about. We have also been focused on the highest spilling sites from 2023 and have already removed ¾ of the top 20 sites.”

“This is part of our 15-year investment plan – and while change on this scale takes time, we are already seeing positive results. We’re also proud to be an industry leader on data and transparency. We measure more spills, more often and therefore have highly accurate data. This progress has been made despite 2023/24 being the wettest hydrological year on record, with exceptional rainfall and groundwater. Against this challenging backdrop, the reduction in spills shows our plan is working – this is not an excuse but is important context.”