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South West Water fined £7.87m for 'horrendous' sewage spills

South West Water has been fined £7,867,733 by Plymouth Magistrates' Court after admitting 18 charges over sewage spills across Devon and Cornwall between 2015 and 2021, following an Environment Agency prosecution.

By Sarah Whitfield · · 1 min read

Photo: Change.org

South West Water has been fined £7,867,733 after admitting 18 charges over sewage spills across Devon and Cornwall, in a criminal prosecution brought by the Environment Agency.

The company was sentenced at Plymouth Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday after entering guilty pleas. Seventeen charges covered illegal sewage discharges; the last was for failing to take reasonable remedial measures after a pumping-station failure.

The pollution incidents happened between 2015 and 2021 in Bodmin, Harlyn, Playing Place and Polperro in Cornwall, and Plymouth in Devon. District Judge Joanna Matson said pollution by water companies “will not be tolerated and must be taken very seriously”, describing “hundreds of incidents of sewage spills into our beaches, waterways and seas”. On 231 occasions between January 2016 and July 2021, untreated sewage was discharged onto Harlyn Bay, and a pumping-station failure at Hooe Lake over the August 2020 bank holiday weekend caused continuous discharge for 88 hours.

South West Water said: “We apologise for what happened in the past.” The company called the case “historic matters between 2015 and 2021”, saying most spills involved “the use of overflows in storm conditions”, with spills down 17% in the last year and spill duration down 25%.

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