UK govt fines Southern Water £7 million for sewage pollution

Southern Water has been fined £7.1 million after repeated illegal sewage pollution incidents forced the closure of beaches and harmed coastal communities. Serious failures were exposed in the company’s wastewater management.

Sentencing Southern Water at Canterbury Crown Court on Friday, Justice Johnson KC heard how preventable equipment failures and poor operational oversight led to repeated discharges of untreated sewage between 2019 and 2021, some at the height of summer.

The prosecution came almost exactly five years after Southern Water received a record £90 million fine for nearly 7,000 illegal sewage discharges.

Across five major pollution incidents, Southern Water repeatedly failed to maintain critical pumping equipment, delayed reporting pollution to regulators and allowed untreated sewage to enter coastal waters.

In July 2019, an Environment Agency investigation found that around 10 million litres of sewage were discharged for almost 24 hours. It could have been prevented, but the staff lacked system knowledge.

Southern Water is legally obliged to report pollution to the Environment Agency as soon as possible, but it failed to do so until the next day. It meant Thanet District Council couldn’t warn people against getting into the water.      

The Environment Agency charged Southern Water with 13 offences, all contrary to regulations 12(1)(b) and 38(1)(a) of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016.

In 2021, Southern Water was fined £90 million for 6,971 illegal sewage discharges in Hampshire, Kent and Sussex. Three years later, the penalty was £330,000 for pollution in a lake near Southampton.

The Environment Agency is also prosecuting Southern Water for other pollution incidents in Kent between 2019 and 2021, including at Faversham and Whitstable, and in Hampshire in 2023, with sentencing to follow later this year.  

Since 2015, the Environment Agency has concluded more than 70 prosecutions against water and sewerage companies, securing fines exceeding £153 million as part of its continued action against serious environmental offending.