A win for water companies: a year of low rain means lower sewage-dumping statistics

Today, 26 March, the government released its latest sewage spill statistics, as gathered by the Environment Agency (EA). The banner headline boasted “Fewer and shorter storm overflow spills” over 2025. Well, that’s just marvellous, isn’t it?

However, once we get about a third of the way into the document, we get to the meat of the matter:

Much of this improvement reflects unusually dry conditions in 2025 following a particularly wet 2024.

So, the water companies are dumping less sewage, not because they’ve done their goddamn jobs, but because they got lucky with the weather.

Or, to put that another way, companies dumped untreated sewage once every two minutes over 2025. However, the UK water industry is such a (literal) shitshow that this constitutes a genuine improvement on 2024. And we’re chalking this up as a fucking win?

Laying cover for the polluters

The EA announced that 2025 saw 291,492 monitored spill events. That represents a 35% drop in storm overflow spills compared to the previous year. It also means that each individual overflow experienced an average of 20.5 spills, down from 31.8 in 2024.

Likewise, the overall duration of those spills also fell massively, by around 48%. Depending on the company, the durations decreased by between 40% and 70%.

However, these drops are to be expected, given that 2025 was an unusually dry year. Storm overflows will naturally see less use when the UK experiences fewer storms. Consequently, we’ll get a more accurate idea of whether the water companies have done their job when we get another year of heavy rain.

It also means that, in spite of the fact that storm overflows should only be used in extreme weather events, the water companies were still making regular use of them. Spring 2025 was the driest in over a century, and the year was the warmest on record overall.

Some water companies even instituted hosepipe bans for the public, and then continued to dump sewage themselves. Yorkshire Water, for example, imposed a 5-month hosepipe ban. Meanwhile, the company’s official performance rating was downgraded because it actually increased its pollution incidents.

Karen Shackleton, representing the Ilkley Clean River Group, said:

Today’s report creates a cover for water companies’ illegal pollution and neglect of our infrastructure. The figures for last year, in drought conditions, take us back to the level of pollution we had two to three years ago in normal weather. This is not a good news story. Yorkshire Water is still polluting illegally and the government is still failing to hold them to account.

Sewage — £6.9m in fines isn’t enough

2025 also brought with it an increase in the monitoring of sewage spills. In particular, all storm overflows in England are now fitted with ‘event duration monitors’ (EDM), giving us a more accurate picture of the extent of individual water companies’ crimes.

Along with this, the EA has also updated its online map of storm overflow monitoring. The EDM Data Portal publishes open-access monitoring information for overflows across England.

Along with this increased level of scrutiny, water companies have been slapped with numerous fines for their crimes. In 2025, these enforcement undertakings ran to a total of £6.9 million for breaches of environmental law.

However — and flogging a dead horse here for a minute — these fines clearly aren’t working. Sophie Conquest, lead campaigner at anti-privatisation pressure group We Own It, said:

Under our privatised system, pollution is rewarded with profit. Less money invested in crucial infrastructure means more of billpayers’ money lining the pockets of shareholders.

Sewage pollution is a dire threat to public health, and has decimated our rivers and seas. This government must stop rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic, and bring water into public ownership without delay – starting with the collapsing Thames Water.

This is a cycle, and by now it’s a familiar one:

1. The water companies don’t maintain their infrastructure.
2. They dump sewage into our lakes, rivers and seas.
3. Then, the Environment Agency slaps them with fines and sanctions.
4. But the water companies go and jack up their prices, ostensibly so that they can fix their shoddy infrastructure.
5. Return to Step 1.

So tell me again who’s actually paying the fines here?

Featured image via the Canary