Southern Water and the Environment Agency are continuing their investigations into the possible causes of pollution at Swalecliffe Brook in Kent following the discovery of dead fish and sewage at a neighbouring beach last week.

Yorkshire Water has been fined £350,000 for illegally discharging sewage that polluted a Harrogate watercourse.

Repeated raw sewage leaks have cost Severn Trent Water £460,000-plus in court - on 21 July 2016, at Nottingham Crown Courtthe company was fined £426,000, ordered to pay Environment Agency costs of £38,642.60 as well as a victim surcharge of £120.

United Utilities Water Limited (UU) has been fined £600,000 and its contractor, KMI+ £333,000 at Bolton Crown Court on Friday 24 June 2016 after pleading guilty to polluting a brook with corrosive bleach.

In a case brought by the Environment Agency, a Dorset farm company has been ordered to pay almost £12,000 in fines and costs for polluting the same stream twice – first with slurry and then silage. The spills occurred within five months of each other.

Site operator, Greener For Life Energy Ltd, and site owner and permit holder Nomansland Biogas Ltd, both pleaded guilty at Exeter Magistrates’ Court last week to negligently polluting the watercourse last year and contravening the requirements of an environmental permit.

A High Peak animal feed business was fined £18,000 today for discharging polluting waste into the public sewer and causing damage to a treatment works.

The organisers of Glastonbury Festival, the world’s biggest music festival, have been ordered to pay £31,000 in fines and costs for pollution offences involving human sewage.

Businesses in a County Durham village are being urged to help take care of the environment after a release of oil into the area’s sewers reached Northumbrian Water’s Sacriston sewage treatment works and a local watercourse, the Black Burn.

A major home building company has been fined £100,000 over a pollution incident relating to a housing development in Huddersfield.