South West Water has been fined £7,867,733 after pleading guilty to 18 pollution-related offences linked to sewage spills in Devon and Cornwall.
The company was sentenced at Plymouth Magistrates’ Court following an Environment Agency investigation into incidents between 2015 and 2021 in Bodmin, Harlyn, Playing Place and Polperro in Cornwall, and Plymouth.
South West Water was also ordered to pay £329,993 in costs. Seventeen of the charges related to illegal discharge activities, including sewage discharges, while the remaining offence involved failing to take reasonable remedial measures after a sewage pumping station failure.
‘Horrendous’ pollution
Judge Jo Matson described the pollution as “horrendous” and “very significant”. She said there had been hundreds of sewage spills on beaches, into waterways and into the sea, including untreated sewage that “gushed through the harbour wall into the harbour at Polperro on a bank holiday weekend”.
“The firm needed to make sure horrendous, very significant incidents of pollution such as these never happen again,” she said.
Clarissa Newell, the Environment Agency’s environment manager for Devon and Cornwall, said the case sent “a clear message today to show that pollution will not be tolerated”. She said the investigation had found instances where alarms had not been responded to and data had been collected but not properly considered.
Company response
South West Water said the case concerned “historic matters between 2015 and 2021” and that most of the spills involved the use of overflows during storm conditions.
“We apologise for what happened in the past,” the company said.
It said it was investing £760m to tackle storm overflows, had reduced spills by 17% in the last year and cut spill duration by 25%. The company also said “significant improvements” had been made at the sites involved in the prosecution.
South West Water said it was focused on achieving cleaner rivers and seas across the South West by 2040, which it described as a decade ahead of national targets.
The fine is the largest imposed for environmental offences in the South West, according to analysis cited in the case. It follows a £1.8m fine imposed on South West Water over a parasite outbreak in July and a fine of more than £2.1m after the company admitted causing pollution in the region in 2023.