Leader of EDDC gets a cameo quote in Leigh Day’s South West Water sewage pollution claim, latest Update 23.02.26:

Claim expands across Devon and Cornwall – Letter Before Action issued to South West Water and parent company Pennon Group PLC. Lead partner Oliver Holland describes this as “an important step in the claim”.

Which towns have been impacted by sewage pollution? 

As sewage pollution continues to affect the lives and livelihoods of coastal and river-based communities throughout the UK, residents and businesses in the South West are taking action. They are bringing a group legal claim against South West Water Limited (South West Water) and Pennon Group Plc in relation to allegations that these companies are responsible for sewage pollution affecting their coastal communities.   

The claim was initially brought on behalf of residents and businesses in Exmouth and Budleigh Salterton. It has since expanded to include other towns and beaches across South West Water’s area of appointment that are among the worst affected in the region. These include:  

• Dawlish Warren and Dawlish (Devon) 
• Sidmouth and Salcombe Regis (Devon) 
• Teignmouth and Holcombe (Devon) 
• Fistral Beach (Newquay, Cornwall) 
• Longrock Beach (near Penzance, Cornwall) 

As highlighted in the recent Channel 4 docudrama, Dirty Business, sewage pollution is a widespread and severe issue across the country. The communities identified in this claim are among those most severely affected across the South West. 

Local beaches play a vital role in these communities, with local economies heavily dependent  on tourism. They are also culturally and socially significant, providing opportunities for sea swimming, water sports and access to the coastline. However, according to local reports, South West Water repeatedly discharges large volume of untreated sewage, with detrimental consequences for the condition and usability of these beaches.

The effects of these discharges have been acknowledged by both the Environment Agency and South West Water. In recent years, the Environment Agency has issued numerous ‘Advice Against Bathing’ notices in recent years, and South West Water has regularly stated on its website that discharges may affect bathing water quality.

More broadly, beaches across the South West have faced repeated disruption as a result of sewage pollution. The leader of East Devon District Council, Paul Arnott, has described the situation as an “ongoing civil emergency” following repeated closures from Seaton to Sidmouth. 

In 2022, Surfers Against Sewage identified Longrock beach as “joint worst” in England for sewage alerts. More recently, during the August 2024 Bank Holiday weekend, red flag warnings were raised on Exmouth Beach to prevent people from entering the water. Fistral beach has also been affected, with sewage alerts leading to the cancellation of surf events.

Go to the Leigh Day website to find out how to join.

Following last week’s Channel 4 docudrama on sewage pollution and the attitudes of the privatised water industry and regulators ” Dirty Business”; many National Newspapers wrote follow on pieces at the weekend.

The Guardian article started by describing Sarah Lambert’s experience and quoted Andy Tyerman of Exmouth’s anti-sewage pollution campaign Escape: “The situation is not getting better, things are getting tangibly worse.”

Dirty water, death and decline: the inside story of a privatisation scandal

www.theguardian.com (extract)

Sarah Lambert took her usual morning swim for 40 minutes off Exmouth town beach before her volunteer shift helping disabled people get access to the water.

A wheelchair user herself, Lambert’s regular sea swims twice a week between the lifeboat station and HeyDays restaurant were the perfect form of exercise for her disability.

It was August 2024, and a dry summer’s day on England’s south-west coast.

At 4.15pm, lifeguards shut the beach, erected red flags and asked people to leave the water after East Devon district council was alerted to a catastrophic burst of the main pipe pumping sewage to the town’s Maer Lane treatment works.

But it was too late for Lambert. She started vomiting later that day and was admitted to hospital suffering life-threatening sepsis after being infected by E coli and Citrobacter bacteria, both of which are commonly found in sewage.

Anger about the state of the privatised water industry in England intensified this week after the screening of Channel 4’s docudrama Dirty Business. It weaves the human tragedy of the death from E coli O157 poisoning of eight-year-old Heather Preen in 1999, who had paddled just the other side of the Exe estuary from Lambert’s swimming spot, with the unfolding of an environmental and public health crisis. It explores three decades of underinvestment by water companies, uncovered in part by amateur sleuths Peter Hammond and Ash Smith, as well as the cosy relationship between the water companies and those meant to be holding them to account.

Lambert is now frightened and anxious about sea swimming, the form of exercise she used to love. “I was seriously ill, I spent a week in hospital before I had to have 10 more days of intravenous antibiotics at home,” said Lambert, 47, who is part of a group environmental legal claim against the local water company, South West Water.

“It took me a long time to recover. I am disabled, so I am quite vulnerable, and I moved to Exmouth to be coastal. The sea is just on my doorstep, but I don’t swim there any more. None of this is right, none of this is acceptable.”

England remains an anomaly across the world, as the only country apart from Chile where water, a natural resource, is owned by private companies for profit. The then Conservative prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, promised in 1989 that privatisation would deliver higher investment.

But as far back as 2002, ministers were warned in a report, which has remained secret, that privatisation would allow large external private equity shareholders to load companies with debt, and the financial regulator Ofwat inevitably would lose any regulatory control.

Now, Prof Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the UN special rapporteur on the human right to clean water, has singled out the English system for criticism, saying water should be managed as a publicly owned service, rather than run by private companies set up to benefit shareholders.

Lambert, like others across the country who closely monitor the performance of their water companies, agrees with the UN rapporteur.

“The situation is not getting better, things are getting tangibly worse,” said Andy Tyerman, of Exmouth’s anti-sewage pollution campaign Escape. “South West Water set its own target for 2025 to be a four-star performer. But they have never been anything higher than two-star for more than 10 years. They set a target of no more than 20 sewage spills on average; last year there were 40 spills on average. We seem to be going backwards to the 1990s.”………

The water company whistleblowers exposing shocking practices

The Times (Extract)

(Feargal Sharkey) says he has been contacted by a huge number of people in recent days who were infuriated by Dirty Business. “It portrayed in the starkest way possible the brutal reality of what’s been going on in the background: that even behind all of these sensational headlines and the Times campaign and the work that everybody’s done, you see the lengths the water companies, the Environment Agency and indeed the government, were going to to wilfully look the other way. Everybody in the country should be outraged. Peter and Ashley are just the beginning of an absolute tidal wave of anger that’s heading in the government’s direction.”