England’s nine water and sewerage companies failed to report 50,292 sewage discharges within the legally required timeframe during the first half of 2026, according to analysis by Surfers Against Sewage (SAS).
The campaign group’s 2026 Water Quality Report, published on 8 October, said the late notifications were leaving the public without timely information about sewage pollution and water safety.
Yorkshire and Anglian recorded the most late reports
Since January 2025, the Environment Act 2021 has required water and sewerage companies in England to publish storm overflow discharge data within one hour of an event starting and ending. The information must be accessible and understandable to the public.
SAS said 50,000 discharges recorded between January and June 2026 were reported more than an hour after they happened, representing 12% of all the discharges it processed. More than 4,000 late reports occurred at bathing waters, it said.
Yorkshire Water accounted for 13,007 of the incidents, followed by Anglian Water with 12,183 and Southern Water with 8,326. United Utilities recorded 5,080, South West Water 3,089, Severn Trent 3,034, Wessex Water 2,441, Northumbrian Water 2,259 and Thames Water 873.
The analysis used real-time information from the national storm overflow hub’s public application programming interfaces and SAS’s Safer Seas and Rivers Service app. SAS said its figures counted events with defined start and stop times and differed from annual sewage spill data, which uses a 12/24-hour counting method.
The group warned that gaps and errors in company reporting could affect the figures. It also said some delays ran to hundreds of hours and claimed there was no evidence that any prosecutions had taken place.
Charity reports rise in illness complaints
SAS said 1,687 people had reported becoming unwell after using rivers, lakes and beaches across the UK between January and August 2026. That exceeded the total reported to the charity during the whole of 2025.
SAS chief executive Giles Bristow said: “Water companies have systemically failed to report sewage discharges on time more than 50,000 times this year. That’s a threat to public health, and it’s illegal.”
SAS said it had contacted Ofwat about enforcement. According to the group, Ofwat responded: “Ofwat doesn’t deep dive into every delay or inefficiency in the system, unless it breaches rules it has a remit to investigate.”
Water industry cites monitoring challenges
A Water UK spokesperson said the English water industry was “the most transparent in the world” because near-real-time storm overflow data was freely available. The organisation said some monitors were in remote locations and that signals occasionally required additional checks, which could cause short delays.
Water UK added that the industry was tripling investment over the next five years to halve storm overflow spills and increase capacity at 1,700 wastewater treatment works.
A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson said the Government was pursuing “the biggest overhaul of the water sector in a generation”. Defra said its strengthened Water Bill would support cleaner waters, stronger accountability and a new regulator, and noted that covering up illegal sewage spills had become a criminal offence.