Thousands of people across the UK gathered at beaches, rivers and lakes on Saturday to demand change in the country’s water pollution levels.

[See ESCAPE for images of the Exe “Paddle Out” event.]

Athena Stavrou www.independent.co.uk

Protesters gathered at swimming spots from West Pier in Brighton to Gyllyngvase Beach in Falmouth following reports that millions of litres of raw sewage were pumped into Windermere in the Lake District for 10 hours in February.

Some held signs and placards calling for clean oceans while others wore costumes as people were seen paddle-boarding out into the ocean.

Among the demands from activists was an end to sewage discharges into all bathing and high-priority nature sites by 2030.

The campaign, coordinated by Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), saw protests at more than 30 locations.

In Brighton, Olympic gold medal runner and keen paddle-boarder Dame Kelly Holmes addressed demonstrators through a megaphone before leading dozens in a paddle-out.

In Falmouth, surfers paddled out en-masse while sea-kayakers carried placards on their boats calling for fish not faeces. Meanwhile, more than 200 people entered the water at a wild swimming spot at Ferris Meadow Lake in Surrey.

Emma Jackson, who organised the Shepperton Open Water Swim event, said she was contacted by SAS after setting up a campaign to save the lake from the River Thames Scheme, which will build a new flood relief channel through the area.

She said the lake naturally cleans itself and was much safer to swim in than the Thames but, under the proposal, the lake would be connected to the river, leaving it in danger of contamination.

She said she could not imagine being unable to swim at the lake if it became unsafe, adding: “I don’t want to think about it. Today is the first day of the season here at Shepperton Open Water Swim and I can tell you, speaking to my community of swimmers, they are all just over the moon to be back and it is a really special place for us.

“There are plenty of spaces you can swim, there are other lakes in the local area, there are other bodies of water that are equally as safe and we can we can swim in but… this place holds a special place in a lot of people’s hearts.”

Dinah Sershi, 54, and Georgina Palffy, 55, who are regular swimmers at the lake, attended the protest.

Ms Palffy said they would feel “bereft” if they were no longer able to swim there due to water contamination.

“We do swim in other places, but none of them are quite as magical as this, and none of them have the amazing clean water that they get here, which is something really special,” she said.

Ms Sershi said swimming at the lake was particularly important for women who are going through the menopause.

“I’m particularly passionate about swimming here,” she said. “I’m a woman in my 50s. And I know a lot of people in this community are in their 40s and 50s and find the water an incredible way of managing the menopause symptoms.”

Emma Pattinson, 55, whose family operates Shepperton Open Water Swim, said there was an “alternative route” for the River Thames Scheme, which would circumvent the lake.

“Obviously we don’t want anyone to be flooded on our behalf,” she said. “But we also want this lake to retain its clean water for our swimmers. It matters a lot to them.”

The protests came after raw sewage was pumped into Lake Windemere for nearly 10 hours in February after a telecommunication failure at a pumping station operated by United Utilities, a major water and wastewater services provider in the North West.

The situation was labelled a “scandal” by opposition politicians, while Downing Street said it was “completely unacceptable” and that the Environment Agency had the power to launch a criminal prosecution if necessary.

Lake Windermere at Bowness in the Lake District national park (Alamy)

The discharge happened at the company’s pumping station at Bowness-on-Windermere in Cumbria on the night of 28 February and intermittently the following day.

The emergency pumps discharged more than 10 million litres of raw sewage into the Unesco world heritage site after the main pumps abruptly stopped due to a telecom fault, insiders at the firm told BBC News, whose report also cited internal documents from the company.

The latest incident comes amid warnings from environmental agencies that swimming and other activities in and around some of the country’s rivers and lakes could be hazardous due to high levels of sewage pollution.

There were 68,481 incidents of sewage released into England’s seas last year, totalling 440,446 hours, campaign group Friends of the Earth said on Wednesday after analysing Environment Agency data.

The Times Leading Article

There is no more basic service for public health and welfare than providing clean water. Yet Britain’s water industry has acquired a reputation for incompetence and excess that is deserved and self-inflicted. It is exemplified in sewage spillages and even disease for consumers, alongside high financial rewards for water companies’ executives and dividends for shareholders. The water industry might almost be a Brechtian parable of the iniquities of capitalism. That would be wrong, but supporters of the market economy need to explain why this industry is exceptional while pressing for tougher consumer protection against its failings.

In the past few days 46 cases of a waterborne disease causing diarrhoea and vomiting have been confirmed in an area of Devon, and more than 100 other residents have reported similar symptoms. South West Water has found what it terms “small traces” of a parasite associated with this disease in a local reservoir, and advised households across the area to boil water before drinking it.

This is not merely an oversight. It is part of an established pattern of errors of omission and commission. There are 11 regional water and sewage companies in England and Wales, with a further five water-only companies. Together they make up a sector that is loaded with debt, even while paying out handsome dividends, and has a dismal record of raw sewage discharges in rivers and on beaches, and inadequate investment.

The costs of failure appear to be minimal. Severn Trent Water, which services more than 4.5 million households and businesses in the Midlands and Wales, was responsible for more than 60,000 sewage spills last year while its chief executive, Liv Garfield, had a compensation package worth £3.2 million. United Utilities, which supplies water in the northwest of England, declared a dividend increase of 9.4 per cent this week, almost exactly coincident with reports of its failure to stop or promptly report a sewage discharge in Windermere, in the Lake District, in February.

While financial rewards for agents and principals in water companies are ample, bills for consumers have risen by more than 40 per cent since the industry was privatised in 1989. It is hardly surprising that populists see it as an example of what is wrong with a market economy. It would be an error to heed their message but policymakers need to address the sector’s dire performance.

There is nothing wrong with high pay for bosses in companies and sectors that compete successfully in a global marketplace. That does not apply to the chief executive of a water company that enjoys an effective monopoly. Ms Garfield’s pay package (and she is not the only one) brings the industry into further well-deserved disrepute. It also lends superficial plausibility to the case that a Labour government, likely to take office within months, should nationalise the sector.

In truth, public ownership would not resolve the problem of poor infrastructure and, for some companies such as Thames Water, financial fragility. As this newspaper’s Clean It Up campaign argues, water companies need to spend more on investment to expand reservoir capacity and fix leaks. Ofwat, the regulator for water and sewage in England and Wales, ought to be far more insistent on investment targets, and ensure that the burden is borne equitably by shareholders and customers.

And on no account should a financially stretched water company be bailed out by taxpayers; there is no systemic threat to the economy, and the costs should fall on holders of the company’s securities.

Water is a test case for capitalism. Because regional providers do not have obvious competitors, the easiest route to generating profits is to skimp on investment, raise bills and pump sewage into rivers. This government and its successor must ensure that stringent regulation puts a stop to this business model and serves the public instead.

In the article below the Health Secretary, Victoria Atkins, is reported as saying there will be “very, very hard questions” for South West Water over the outbreak of cases of cryptosporidium.

Owl thinks equally hard questions need to be addressed to her and Conservative governments past and present. There’s the 1989 privatisation in the first place: with all debts being placed on the shoulders of taxpayers and the new companies given a £1.5bn “green dowry” as well;, followed by austerity cuts and “light touch” regulation.

Victoria Atkins was elected to parliament in 2015 and appointed as a junior minister in 2017 when austerity was still being pushed hard.

Did she, for example, follow the whip over watering down attempts to toughen regulation and targets on pollution alongside Simon Jupp? – Owl

Health Secretary looks into the South West water crisis

Tim Herbert www.midweekherald.co.uk

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said there will be “very, very hard questions” for South West Water over the outbreak of cases of cryptosporidium, a waterborne disease caused by a microscopic parasite, confirmed in the Brixham area of Devon, writes PA.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to the University of Exeter, Ms Atkins said: “There will be very, very hard questions for South West Water to answer. At the moment I think we probably need to give them the space to conduct their investigation; we know that they have identified the source.

“The public will want to know how on earth that source happened, what was the chain of events that led to this, because of course we all understand the expectation that we all have when we turn our taps on is that (we get) clean drinking water and we want to be able to trust it.”

She added: “Outbreaks such as this are very, very unusual in our drinking water. The authorities are looking into this very carefully. People must please follow the advice for the time being and as the investigation proceeds, more answers will be obtained for the public.”

Nearly two thirds of voters would be more likely to back a political party committed to higher taxes on the wealthiest to fund the NHS and public services.

Andy Gregory www.independent.co.uk

The data on public opinion on taxes comes as the annual Sunday Times Rich List found Britain’s 350 richest families hold a combined wealth of £795bn – with the fortune of prime minister Rishi Sunak rising.

Both major political parties clicked into general election campaign mode this week, with Sir Keir Starmer unveiling a Tony Blair-style set of election pledges and chancellor Jeremy Hunt using a speech on Friday to warn that taxes would rise under a Labour government.

But a new FocalData survey commissioned by the group Tax Justice UK suggests that there is public support for major changes to the tax system.

Told that a 1 to 2 per cent ‘mansion tax’ on assets worth over £10m would affect around 20,000 people and could raise up to £22bn a year, 72 per cent of respondents indicated that they would support for such a tax, with 73 per cent backing such a toll to help invest in the NHS.

And 57 per cent of the survey’s 1,011 respondents said they would support charging the same tax rate on income derived from wealth as on income earned from employment.

The findings come as the publication of the Sunday Times Rich List suggested that prime minister Rishi Sunak is now wealthier than King Charles.

The personal fortune of the prime minister and his wife, Akshata Murty, surged by more than £120m over the past year, soaring to £651m in the latest list – as the latter’s shares in her father’s IT firm Infosys grew in value by £108.8m.

This put the Sunak’s wealth above that of the King, whose fortune rose by £10m to hit £610m.

Responding to the new Rich List, Downing Street insisted Mr Sunak should be judged on his actions and not his personal fortune.

The prime minister’s deputy spokesperson told reporters: “He’s been asked about this before and we’d always point people to the actions that he takes to support people … That’s his focus and his priority and he should be judged on that.”

The 350 wealthiest individuals and families on the list together held combined wealth of £795.36 billion, according to the new data – which showed the number of British billionaires tumbled slightly from a peak of 177 in 2022 to 165 this year.

Robert Watts, who compiled the rich list, said the findings suggested that “Britain’s billionaire boom has come to an end”, adding: “Many of our home-grown entrepreneurs have seen their fortunes fall and some of the global super rich who came here are moving away.

“Thousands of British livelihoods rely on the super-rich to some extent. We’ll have to wait and see whether we have now reached peak billionaire, and what that means for our economy.”

Responding to the findings indicating support for taxing such individuals more stringently, Tax Justice UK’s head of advocacy and policy Rachael Henry said: “Taxing the wealth of the very richest is an extremely popular policy – a vote winner – and an incredibly sensible way to help fix the country.

“People in Britain are really struggling and so are public services. The NHS is wounded, getting an NHS dentist is akin to a lottery win, and GP surgeries are creaking under pressure. Politicians need to see the wood for the trees and use the tools available to them to inject life back into the country.”