Party’s proposed regulator would have power to bring legal action which could imprison water company bosses
Water companies that dumped sewage into rivers 177,000 times were labelled as “top performers” on pollution by the “pointless” regulator Ofwat, new analysis shows.
The water watchdog’s latest report shows that the three best rated water companies – Northumbrian Water, Severn Trent Water and United Utilities – all still dumped sewage into Britain’s waterways in 2020 and 2021.
Analysis by the Liberal Democrats found that the sewage discharges lasted more than 1.2 million hours in total.
In Rishi Sunak’s constituency of Richmond in North Yorkshire, sewage was dumped 2,474 times by Yorkshire Water and Northumbrian Water last year.