Southern Water pleaded guilty on April 7 to releasing untreated sewage, debris and diesel into the sea and inland waters across north Kent after a series of pollution incidents between 2019 and 2021.
The guilty pleas at Medway Magistrates’ Court covered five pollution offences brought by the Environment Agency. Among the incidents was a July 2019 case in Whitstable, when people reported seeing and smelling oil in Swalecliffe Brook and agency staff laid absorbent booms to contain diesel from the company’s local wastewater treatment plant. Investigators said the diesel had reached the brook and then the sea after a generator failed and began leaking.
Other cases followed. Across three days from March 5, untreated sewage was released into Faversham Creek from a separate wastewater station after pumps stopped working, while on the same day Swalecliffe Brook was hit again with sewage that was carried into the sea. Environment Agency officers found sewage and debris flowing under the main gates of the treatment plant in Brook Road, over a grass verge and into the water. An almost identical incident happened in October 2020, when sewage and other matter travelled out of the main gate of the works, along the road, across the verge and into the brook.
More pollution happened at Southern Water plants in Whitstable in August 2021, directly into the sea or via Swalecliffe Brook. On August 6, untreated sewage poured into the brook again, investigators found around 70 dead fish, including eels, and the effluent flowed into the sea and significantly affected water quality. Canterbury City Council put up signs along beaches at Tankerton and Herne Bay warning against swimming for nearly a week afterwards.
Dawn Theaker, speaking for the Environment Agency, said the incidents could have been avoided if Southern Water had managed operations more carefully and had the necessary checks in place to deal with problems when they occurred. She said it was a familiar pattern with water companies, describing them as always catching up with events, and said the agency would keep Southern Water in its sights with more inspections, tougher regulation and prosecution in the most serious cases.
The timing gives the case added weight. The guilty pleas came only weeks after Southern Water was fined a record £90million for thousands of illegal sewage discharges off the south coast, including two that went directly into the sea. The north Kent case now adds another set of admissions to a company already under intense scrutiny, and it leaves regulators with the same question they have been pressing for years: whether repeated pollution can be stopped before it reaches the water.
