The 150m long mountain of rubbish that has been illegally dumped beside the A34 and near the River Cherwell in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, December 12, 2025
THE government and regulators may have failed to comply with key laws on protecting water quality in rivers, lakes and seas, the environmental watchdog said today.
The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) confirmed it had identified possible failures by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Environment Agency to comply with rules designed to protect and improve water quality.
Under the regulations, water quality plans have to be in place for individual water bodies.
But the OEP said it found the plans tended to be too generic, did not address specific issues at individual sites and were being put in place despite low government confidence their objectives could be met.
As a result, key targets for improvement of water bodies by 2027 are highly likely to be missed, the watchdog said.
The OEP has sent both Defra and the Environment Agency “information notices” setting out the suspected failures, and they have two months to formally respond.
April 2023 Surfers Against Sewage and Extinction Rebellion protests in St Agnes, Perranporth, Truro and Charlestown which unveiled spoof Blue Plaques to the MPs and Conservative Government who allowed raw sewage to be dumped in the sea (Image: Surfers Against Sewage)
Rather, recent governments have combined significant relaxation of the rules with systematic underfunding of supervising agencies: the Health & Safety Executive has lost 45 per cent of its budget since 2010, the Environment Agency 50 per cent.
The result is corporate impunity. Companies that break the rules — whether on safety, workers’ rights, pollution or anything else — are unlikely to be caught.
When they are — and the privatised water sector is one of the few where fines have risen in 2024-25 — the nature of corporate investment incentivises continued rule-breaking. This year we’ve seen international creditors threaten to collapse Thames Water if their money is used to pay fines it received for breaking the law.
Good Jobs First has exposed how prevalent non-enforcement of the rules is across the entire economy.
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Unrestricted corporate profiteering is making Britain an ever dirtier, more dangerous and more expensive place to live.
Significant expansion of public ownership and investment in regulatory agencies to give them the means to punish bad actors is the only solution: it requires a radical change of direction from the next PM.
A general view of the Houses of Parliament in London
Report shows enforcement hits new lows under Labour
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The data showed a steep drop in regulatory penalties for abusive employers in workplace safety, consumer protection, as well as financial and environmental offences.
This steep decline follows a government request earlier this year, asking regulators to ease actions against businesses in the hopes of stimulating economic growth.
PM Sir Keir Starmer’s government sent out letters to 17 regulators telling them to relax rules for companies across several key sectors.
In response, environmental agency enforcement continued its decades-long decline in 2025, while the Financial Conduct Authority saw a drop of nearly £600 million in penalties compared with 2024.
The report also showed that successful outcomes at employment tribunals went down this year, while the number of cases waiting to be heard have increased dramatically, with many being scheduled for 2027 or 2028.
Levels of enforcement from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) also dropped, the think tank found.
Reacting to the report, Green MP Sian Berry told the Star: “This report lays bare a catastrophic weakening of the rules that protect people and the planet.
“When environmental enforcement collapses, polluters get a green light to poison our rivers, trash our air and destroy habitats with impunity.
“The decades-long decline in Environment Agency enforcement, alongside falling financial penalties, is not an accident; it is the result of political choices.
“This is a clear failure of the Labour government to stand up to corporate power.
A tanker pumps out excess sewage from the Lightlands Lane sewage pumping station in Cookham, Berskhire
CALLS to nationalise the water sector intensified yesterday after it emerged that serious pollution incidents in England jumped by 60 per cent last year.
The Environment Agency reported 75 major incidents that fell under categories one and two, which can severely harm the environment and human health.
Serious incidents doubled from 14 to 33 at crisis-hit Thames Water, the watchdog found.
Southern Water was responsible for 15 of the incidents and Yorkshire Water for 13.
Pollution incidents across all categories had increased by 29 per cent, with 2,801 recorded last year.
Thames Water recorded the most incidents again at 523, followed by Anglian Water (482) and United Utilities (376).
The rise was attributed to underinvestment in new infrastructure, poor asset maintenance and reduced resilience due to the impacts of climate change.
We Own It founder Cat Hobbs said the figures “are the latest indicator of a water sector in total chaos.
“The roots of this chaos extend all the way back to when Thatcher privatised water in the 1980s — effectively flogging the family silver for a quick buck.
“Since then, private shareholders have stuffed their pockets with gold, amassing £80 billion in payouts.
“They’ve killed our rivers and let the infrastructure crumble, while bill-payers pick up the tab.
“Recent research shows that the cost of public ownership could be close to zero. This solution could also save the public £3-5bn a year, making publicly owned water a source of income for the Treasury.”
Sewage is only supposed to be discharged following extreme weather. Image: Jeff Buck (cc-by-sa/2.0)
Some 27% of English billpayers have considered withholding their bill payments due to water supplier failings, a survey shows.
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.
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.
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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.
April 2023 Surfers Against Sewage and Extinction Rebellion protests in St Agnes, Perranporth, Truro and Charlestown which unveiled spoof Blue Plaques to the MPs and Conservative Government who allowed raw sewage to be dumped in the sea (Image: Surfers Against Sewage)
AS FRUSTRATION grows over failure to tackle pollution, new research revealed yesterday that over a quarter of adults in England have considered withholding water bill payments.
A new report from Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) has accused the water industry of falling short of the Environment Agency’s target to reduce pollution incidents by 40 per cent.
Instead, they recorded a 30 per cent increase to 2,487 incidents, the highest in a decade.
Polling 2,000 adults, SAS found that 27 per cent of people in England have considered not paying their bill due to the actions of their water supplier.
Water bills surged by 47 per cent this month and are expected to keep rising, with customers projected to pay £160 more in 2030 compared with 2024.
April 2023 Surfers Against Sewage and Extinction Rebellion protests in St Agnes, Perranporth, Truro and Charlestown which unveiled spoof Blue Plaques to the MPs and Conservative Government who allowed raw sewage to be dumped in the sea (Image: Surfers Against Sewage)
The 150m long mountain of rubbish that has been illegally dumped beside the A34 and near the River Cherwell in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, December 12, 2025
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves takes part in a townhall session at the Calthorpe Community Gardens in London, December 18, 2025
