Raw sewage pumped into UK waterways for 4.7 million hours in 2024: 'This will only get worse'

The public don’t believe private companies can fix the worsening sewage crisis, a report has found – and at least a quarter are considering boycotting water bill payments. 

Water bills will surge by an average of £31 per year over the next five years. 

Suppliers have justified the increase – which will bring the average annual bill to £588 by the end of the decade – as the only way to fund fixes to Britain’s crumbling sewage infrastructure.

But according to a blistering new Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) report, just a third (33%) of English adults believe that their supplier will take the necessary action to end sewage pollution.

And around a quarter (27%) have considered withholding their bill payments due to the actions of their water supplier. 

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This disillusionment is little surprise. Pollution is surging: Water companies in England have collectively failed their targets to reduce pollution incidents, SAS’s 2024 Water Quality Report shows, with 2,487 incidents recorded in 2024. 

That’s more than double the target set by the Environment Agency – and it’s the tip of the iceberg. In 2024 alone, raw sewage was released into UK waterways 592,478 times, for a combined 4.7 million hours. That’s the equivalent of 535 years’ worth of waste, pouring into the lakes and rivers people swim in, kayak through and drink from.

The Environmental Agency allows water companies to release overflow after heavy rains – but they have been fined for regularly pumping sewage during dry spells, too. 

The numbers are “staggering”, said Giles Bristow, CEO at Surfers Against Sewage.

“[We’re seeing] record hours of sewage discharges, huge bill increases, thousands of people becoming ill and yet still the industry has the gall to still pay out billions of bill payer money to shareholders,” he said. “Things could not be clearer: this broken system needs urgent and radical reform.”

England is unique in its full-scale privatisation of water. Across much of the world, water is managed by public or local bodies. SAS argues that the current English model is an international outlier – and a cautionary tale. 

Since Margaret Thatcher privatised the English water industry in 1989, shareholders have received more than £78bn in dividends. Meanwhile private water firms – which are more than 90% owned by shareholders abroad – have amassed more than £60bn in debt. 

This has driven companies like Thames Water close to bankruptcy, reliant on expensive loans to stay afloat. 

Meanwhile, pollution has surged, with serious public health consequences. The SAS Safer Seas & Rivers Service app logged 1,853 sickness reports in 2024, averaging around five people falling ill every day. The consequences ranged from gastroenteritis to serious bacterial infections – and even hospitalisation.

For some, the cost has been life-altering. Suzi Finlayson, a mother of two from Bognor Regis, was an avid sea swimmer until 2024, when she became gravely ill. After swimming near Aldwick Beach during a 14-day sewage overflow event, the 42-year-old contracted a rare blood infection that developed into infective endocarditis. She spent six weeks in hospital, required open-heart surgery, and was left unable to walk her dogs or run her business for months.

“I became critically ill,” she said. “There is a complete lack of transparency, accountability and urgency when it comes to public health and environmental impact.”

The water industry faces few consequences for this kind of incident, said Bristow. 

“The water industry fails, fails and fails again and yet is permitted to come up smelling of roses,” he said. “Meanwhile, our coastlines, rivers and lakes suffer the stench of sewage pollution.”

SAS is calling for nationalisation to put public health back on the agenda. This is a popular demand: according to YouGov research, 82% of Brits support nationalisation – an increase of 23 points on 2017.

According to University of Greenwich research released last week, 35p in every £1 of water bills in England flows directly to shareholders and banks, leaving less money for investment. In Scotland, where water is nationalised, just 8p in the £1 is spent on the cost of finance and household bills are £113 cheaper.

The study found that if English and Welsh water companies were taken into public ownership their financing costs for new investment could also fall to 8% of revenue or less, saving as £15-25bn on the cost of financing a new five-year investment programme to mend broken pipes and clean up our rivers.

“We’re all paying a 35% ‘privatisation tax’ on our water bills – with a third of our money going straight into the pockets of shareholders and banks,” said Matthew Topham, lead campaigner at We Own It. This advocacy group commissioned the Greenwich research. “This will only get worse until we take back control of our water.”

The new SAS report is yet more evidence of the failures of privatisation, added Bristow.

“The era of broken pipes and broken promises must end,” Bristow said. “We need a fresh vision for water – one that ends pollution for profit.”

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