Three Water Company Sewage Fines Were Announced in September. The Environment Agency Says the Fines Cannot Go on Bills
Three prosecutions brought by the Environment Agency ended in fines announced in the same month, for offences between 2015 and 2023. The Agency's own statement is that water companies cannot raise prices to offset a fine.
By Water Pages
Fines against three water and sewerage companies for sewage pollution in England were announced in September 2026, each in a case brought by the Environment Agency. All three had pleaded guilty. The offences behind them took place between 2015 and 2023.
| Company | Sentenced | Court | Where | When the offences took place | Fine |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Utilities Water Limited | 8 September | Preston Magistrates’ Court | Fylde Coast, Lancashire | 11 to 22 June 2023 | £900,000 |
| Southern Water | 22 September (announced) | Bromley Magistrates’ Court | Faversham and Whitstable, Kent | 2019 to 2021 | £2.4m |
| South West Water | 29 September | Plymouth Magistrates’ Court | Bodmin, Harlyn, Playing Place, Polperro and Plymouth | January 2015 to July 2021 | £7,867,733 |
Who pays
In its background notes to the Southern Water case, the Environment Agency states: “Water companies cannot raise prices to offset fines. Instead, fines should reduce profits, dividends, and executive bonuses, creating internal pressure for cultural and operational change.”
On the Agency’s account, a fine is the company’s cost, not the customer’s. The second sentence is what the Agency says fines should do, not a report of what they have done.
The same notes put the wider record at more than 70 prosecutions of water and sewerage companies concluded by the Agency since 2015, with fines of more than £150m.
South West Water: £7.8m, for six years of offences
District Judge Matson fined South West Water £7,867,733 on 29 September and ordered £329,993 in costs and a £120 victim surcharge. The company had pleaded guilty to 18 charges: 17 for illegal water discharge activities and one for failing to take reasonable remedial measures after a failure at a pumping station. The Agency’s release calls it “the largest ever fine imposed for environmental offences in the region”. The company has 56 days to pay.
What the court heard, as the release states it:
- Harlyn beach: untreated sewage discharged on 231 occasions between January 2016 and July 2021.
- Near Bodmin: 336 illegal spills at the company’s sewage works in the seven years to March 2020.
- Polperro Harbour, 24 August 2019: untreated sewage “gushed through the harbour wall on a bank holiday weekend”, and the company took 10 hours to attend despite alarms firing. £1.1m of the total relates to this one incident.
- Budshead Creek, Plymouth: a combined sewer the company failed to fix permanently despite multiple formal warnings, leading to two pollution incidents in August and September 2020.
The judge found the company’s conduct amounted to “reckless failures” and that, despite pleading guilty, it had tried to minimise its role. Six further charges, relating to spills at Holywell Sewage Pumping Station, will be dealt with at a later date not yet set. South West Water was previously fined £2.15m in 2023 on 13 charges.
Southern Water: £2.4m, weeks after £7.1m
Southern Water was fined £2.4m at Bromley Magistrates’ Court, with £69,894.04 in costs and a £190 victim surcharge, on five charges it had admitted at Medway Magistrates’ Court on 7 April. The incidents, around Faversham and Whitstable, included diesel from a leaking generator reaching Swalecliffe Brook in July 2019, untreated sewage entering Faversham Creek over 3 days in March 2020, and sewage from Brook Road pumping station in August 2021, where investigators found around 70 dead fish, including eels. Canterbury City Council put up signs at Tankerton and Herne Bay warning against swimming for nearly a week.
The Agency’s release says the fine came weeks after a £7.1m penalty for pollution that closed beaches in Thanet. Southern Water is due in court again in December over separate incidents, including one at Herne Bay where 49 homes and businesses were flooded with sewage.
United Utilities: £900,000, for a spill on the Fylde Coast
United Utilities Water Limited was fined £900,000 at Preston Magistrates’ Court on 8 September, with £62,225 in prosecution costs and a £2,000 victim surcharge: £964,225 in total, on five permit offences. Between 11 and 22 June 2023 raw sewage was discharged into the Irish Sea from three pumping stations, at Manchester Square, Anchorsholme and Chatsworth Avenue, for more than 35 hours in total.
The cause, the Agency found, was the partial collapse of a final effluent pipe at Fleetwood Wastewater Treatment Works, which backed sewage up through the network. The Agency issued “no bathing” advice across all eight designated bathing waters on that stretch of coast, and the Food Standards Agency temporarily closed three shellfish beds. The company puts the cost of responding to and repairing the incident at around £38 million, and made a voluntary £250,000 payment to Blackpool Council.
What it means at home
None of the three releases describes any change to customers’ bills or any payment to customers. What the cases add is record. The offences are between 3 and 11 years old, and a sentence reported this month is not evidence of how a company is performing now. The pollution record for any company is published, and how to read it for your own supplier is on the check it yourself page.
The prosecutions were brought by the Environment Agency, which regulates discharges in England. The United Utilities and Southern Water releases name the charges as offences under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016; the South West Water release does not name the legislation.
Read at source 30 September 2026 and re-checked against all three 4 October 2026: three releases published on gov.uk by the Environment Agency, “Water company fined record £900k after coastline sewage spill” (8 September 2026), “Southern Water fined £2.4m for Kent pollution” (22 September 2026) and “‘Reckless’ South West Water fined £7.8 million” (29 September 2026). Every figure, date and quotation above is taken from them. The Southern Water release does not give the date of sentencing; 22 September is the date it was published. Water Pages is an independent information service, not a government body or a water company.