Analysis of Environment Agency data by the Liberal Democrats revealed that South West Water was the worst water company in absolute terms, responsible for 31 of the total 112 faulty monitors on storm overflows at bathing waters.

Simon Jupp spins like a top as he plays catch up with public opinion

In October 2021 Johnson’s Conservative government, with the votes of Simon Jupp and Neil Parish, succeeded in voting down a Lords amendment designed to stop private water companies from dumping raw sewage into the UK’s waterways. The amendment would have placed a legal duty on companies “to make improvements to their sewerage systems and demonstrate progressive reductions in the harm caused by discharges of untreated sewage.“

In January 2023 Simon Jupp started spinning his voting record when he said, rather archly, that he “would never vote to pollute our water”. 

In March 2023 Simon Jupp, chairing a Westminster Hall debate on the performance of South West Water, said: …Of course, in a perfect world, we would stop sewage spills completely and immediately. Sadly, that is virtually impossible in the short term; because of the pressure on our water infrastructure, we would risk the collapse of the entire water network, and the eye-watering costs involved mean we would need not just a magic money tree, but a whole forest.

By June 2023 Simon Jupp had obviously changed his mind when he said he wanted to see action.

In July Simon Jupp said: “I’m working with Ofwat & @EnvAgency to get South West Water to clean up their act & our water, 

Later in July Simon Jupp met with South West Water’s Chief Executive, Susan Davy, in Sidmouth urging South West Water to move swiftly on their £30 million investment plans for water infrastructure in Sidmouth & Tipton St John.

Little wonder South West Water seem to take no notice of him – Owl

Faulty monitors leave sewage spilling into bathing water

Adam Vaughan www.thetimes.co.uk

More than a hundred monitors tracking sewage spills at bathing waters around England were faulty last year, meaning people may have been unwittingly swimming in polluted seas.

Analysis of Environment Agency data by the Liberal Democrats revealed that South West Water was the worst water company in absolute terms, responsible for 31 of the total 112 faulty monitors on storm overflows at bathing waters. United Utilities, which serves the northwest of England, was second on 21, and Northumbrian Water was third at 21.

A monitor is considered faulty if it works less than 90 per cent of the time.

Northumbrian Water was the worst offender in relative terms, with more than 20 per cent of its monitors not functioning last year. It was followed by Anglian Water on 14.6 per cent and South West Water on 11.9 per cent.

The government has pushed to have monitoring increased on storm overflows.

The pipes are designed as emergency relief valves in the sewer network to spill raw sewage into rivers and seas at times of heavy rainfall to stop it backing up into homes and businesses.

Despite the government drive, the number of faulty monitors at designated bathing waters was up 27 per cent last year on the 88 in 2021.

The analysis shows that in some places monitors remained broken for a protracted period of time. A total of 52 at swimming spots were faulty in both 2021 and 2022, which the Lib Dems said showed “water firms’ negligence in their infrastructure”.

At Seaford in East Sussex, where beaches were hit by raw sewage spills during last August’s summer holidays , sewage monitors run by Southern Water were broken for the whole of 2021.

At neighbouring Newhaven Beach, they have been faulty for two years.

“This is a national scandal. These profiteering firms have been too busy stuffing their pockets instead of fixing basic infrastructure.

“With all these broken monitors, we have no idea just how much sewage people are swimming in. As millions of people flock to the beach this month, we need these monitors fixed immediately,” Tim Farron, the Lib Dem environment spokesman, said.

Water companies have a legal obligation to ensure all of the almost 15,000 storm overflows across England have monitoring in place by the end of the year. In March the Times revealed that monitoring was still not in place at more than 600 sites , though that figure will have now fallen dramatically.

The Times’ Clean It Up campaign has been calling for stronger regulation and faster investment by water companies to improve the nation’s rivers and seas. Only 14 per cent of rivers in England are considered by the Environment Agency to meet good ecological status.

Dozens of beaches around the UK have a sewage spill alert in place following heavy rainfall. The warnings on the Surfers Against Sewage map range from Summerleaze beach at Bude in Cornwall to Hunstanton beach in Norfolk.

The vast majority of bathing waters at English beaches meet minimum water quality standards , with 302 rated excellent last year, 87 good and 18 sufficient. Just 12 were considered poor. However, there are concerns that some sites could be downgraded. Local officials in Portsmouth recently warned that Southsea East beach could become considered unsuitable for swimming, partly over concerns about seagull droppings .

A spokesperson for the trade body Water UK said: “[The economic regulator] Ofwat has confirmed that 92 per cent of monitors worked correctly last year; however, given the speed of installation, 8 per cent of monitors did not report reliably.

“This particularly occurred where mobile phone reception, which is needed to transmit results, proved patchy. Companies have been working to fix this, and the regulator has taken new powers to levy steep financial penalties if reliability does not improve.”

A South West Water spokesperson said: “With one-third of the UK’s bathing waters, we have focused on achieving 100 per cent monitoring across all of our storm overflows, and achieved that last year, ahead of plan.”

A government spokesperson said: “Where faulty or inactive monitors are identified by the Environment Agency, they are then investigated further, and we will hold water companies to account to deliver that.”