The Salmon & Trout Conservation has submitted a formal complaint to the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) on the failure of OFWAT and Secretaries of State to enforce law on sewage pollution of English rivers.

The STC said the complaint comes after the Government has admitted that sewage infrastructure has not kept pace with population growth, or the pressures placed on it by climate change.

A statement issued by the STC said:

“Since 1991 – the time of water privatisation – the law has required water companies to treat sewage properly. Yet OFWAT, the economic regulator of the water companies, has failed to allow, and indeed require water companies to invest in sewerage infrastructure and treatment works. “

“OFWAT’S failure has led to many English rivers receiving discharges of under-treated and untreated sewage even during dry weather damaging river ecosystems and wildlife that are supposed to enjoy the toughest protection under conservation law and making them unfit for any sort of recreational use.”

The Water Industry Act 1991 requires water companies to “effectually deal” with sewage, rendering it innocuous before discharging the effluent to rivers, a requirement that is and had been enforceable for the last thirty years. The only circumstances in which discharges of untreated sewage direct to rivers is acceptable at law is following periods of heavy rainfall, which threaten back-flooding of sewers into domestic properties.

According to the conservation NGO, for 25 years the Environment Agency has also failed to impose environmental permits that properly protect rivers and to monitor, inspect and enforce against those permits.

Guy Linley-Adams, Solicitor for S&TC, said:

“While the Government busies itself tabling amendments of its own Environment Bill, and pretends to be making huge concessions on sewage pollution, the truth of the matter is that it and successive governments have simply failed to use the enforcement powers in the Water Industry Act 1991 to require water companies to treat sewage to a decent standard.

“There has been an unhealthy conspiracy of silence between the Government, OFWAT and the Environment Agency over many years, driven by the political desire to keep water bills down, come what may, but that has occurred at the expense of the environment.

“The current furore about the quality of water in English rivers is the culmination of years of neglect and a wilful failure to enforce the law”.

Nick Measham, CEO of STC commented:

“We look forward to reading what the OEP thinks about successive Secretaries of State and their regulators abject failureto tackle and prevent sewage pollution, which is what we were all promised at the time of privatisation back in 1990”.

STC is asking the OEP to investigate the whole issue - in particular “the activities of OFWAT in providing for and securing water industry investment in sewerage infrastructure and treatment works capacity, and the Secretary of State’s guidance to OFWAT.”

According to supporting information set out in the complaint, data released by the Environment Agency in 2020 shows that sewage and wastewater discharges by water companies into rivers account for damage to 36% of water bodies – failure to meet ‘good ecological status’ under the now-domesticated EU Water Framework Directive.

Despite this legal framework, water companies discharged raw sewage into rivers and coastal waters in England more than 400,000 times in 2020 according to Environment Agency data.

Untreated or undertreated sewage was discharged into rivers and seas for a total of 3.1m hours in 2020 via overflow pipes (Combined Sewer Overflows or CSOs) that are supposed to be used only in extreme weather to relieve pressure in the sewage system.

Under-treated or untreated storm sewage discharges in England into rivers and seas increased from 292,864 incidents in 2019 to 403,171 in 2020 – a 37% rise.