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Tag: Feargal Sharkey

  • Labour’s new powers for water customers are a ‘stitch-up’, say campaigners

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    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/sep/07/labour-new-powers-water-companies-consumer-stitch-up

    Ministers promised last year to set up new water boards for consumers that would allow them to air complaints. Photograph: Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images

    [Guardian] Exclusive: Documents reveal water firms have been allowed to advise on how they wish to be held to account

    Labour’s new powers for customers to hold water companies to account are a “stitch-up”, campaigners have said, as utilities firms have been advising on how to implement it.

    …

    Documents released under freedom of information laws reveal the CCW has been consulting water companies on how to set up the new consumer boards that would hold them to account. It said it had “set up an industry advisory group to get ideas, feedback and advice from water companies”.

    Feargal Sharkey, the former Undertones frontman turned water campaigner, said: “This is a stitch-up. If water companies are involved in setting this up customers will not get any redress. The people who are important in all of this are the customers who have been extorted by these companies. The CCW is asking the extorters what should be happening to the victims, this is an outrage and a scandal.”

    He added: “It sounds like this scheme will be equally inept and dysfunctional.”

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    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/sep/07/labour-new-powers-water-companies-consumer-stitch-up

  • Thames Water launches appeal for permission to raise bills even higher

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    Image of a burst water main.
    Image of a burst water main.

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/14/thames-water-launches-appeal-for-permission-to-raise-bills-even-higher

    Struggling firm to appeal to competition watchdog to hike fees by more than Ofwat-approved 35% over next five years

    Thames Water is to appeal to the UK’s competition regulator to be allowed to raise customers’ bills over the next five years even higher than previously granted, prompting a furious reaction from campaigners.

    The water company, which serves 16 million customers in London and south-east England, will ask the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for permission to raise bills from 2025 to 2030 by more than the 35% the water regulator for England and Wales, Ofwat, approved last year.

    Thames Water, which is on the verge of financial collapse, had wanted to raise bills by 59% over the next five years. It said on Friday morning its board had concluded that Ofwat’s final determination would not allow the investment and improvement needed to improve its services.

    The move was swiftly criticised by clean water campaigners. Feargal Sharkey, the former lead singer of the Undertones, said Thames was showing “two fingers to customers” by seeking even higher bills, having “dumped billions of litres of sewage into rivers” and extracted too much water from chalk streams.

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    Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/14/thames-water-launches-appeal-for-permission-to-raise-bills-even-higher

  • Bathers warned away from 25 beaches polluted by sewage in Wales

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    https://leftfootforward.org/2024/05/bathers-warned-away-from-25-beaches-polluted-by-sewage-in-wales/

    “You weren’t expecting to go swimming this bank holiday weekend, anyway, were you?”

    Coastal tourist hotspots in Wales should be teeming with people this Bank Holiday weekend. But instead, people are being told to avoid them because of sewage pollution. 

    Surfers Against Sewage, a leading UK marine conservation campaign charity, monitors water quality at over 450 river and coastal locations so people can swim, surf or splash without the risk of becoming ill. This week, the campaigners issued alerts that more than 25 beaches in Wales have been polluted by storm sewage or given a poor water classification.

    Some of Wales’ most popular tourist destinations, including Criccieth, Tenby, Colwyn Bay, and Swansea, have been deemed as unsafe due to sewage pollution.

    The campaigners warned how storm sewage had been discharged from sewer overflows within the past 48 hours at many beaches. They informed how short-term pollution is caused when heavy rainfall washes faecal material into the sea from livestock, sewage and urban drainage via streams and rivers.

    Posting a report of the alerts on X, environmental campaigner Feargal Sharkey, who is vice chair of River Action, mocked: “You weren’t expecting to go swimming this bank holiday weekend anyway were you?”

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    https://leftfootforward.org/2024/05/bathers-warned-away-from-25-beaches-polluted-by-sewage-in-wales/

  • Fury as national health check of England’s waters faces six year wait

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    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/19/fury-as-national-health-check-of-englands-waters-delayed-by-six-years

    Exclusive: Assessment that used to happen annually will now take six years despite rising concerns

    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)
    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)

    A nationwide annual health check of England’s water bodies which used to take place annually, will now take six years to complete, prompting anger from campaigners and politicians, as public alarm grows over the state of the nation’s rivers and coasts.

    The assessments, undertaken by the Environment Agency, look at the ecological and chemical condition of rivers, lakes, groundwater, and transitional and coastal waters, and are required under the Water Framework Directive (WFD).

    In 2019, the last time the full assessments took place, just 14% of rivers were in good ecological health and none met standards for good chemical health. Before 2016 the tests were done annually, but the government has now opted not to deliver a complete update until 2025, the latest permissible under the WFD.

    Clean water advocates accused the government of trying to hide the data.

    Rivers activist Feargal Sharkey said: “The future of England’s rivers has been sacrificed in a cynical act of self preservation by the very same failed government agency set up to protect them.”

    The Green party peer Natalie Bennett said the government “clearly recognised the huge public anger about the parlous state of our waterways, but instead of taking action to clean them up, it is instead trying to hide the data”.

    She added that the “stench of pollution, the choking of our waters with sewage, plastics and farm runoff is evident to all”, and that the Green party wanted to see a return to more frequent publication of the river health statistics. “Democracy demands transparency, and that’s one more thing this government is not delivering.”

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    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/19/fury-as-national-health-check-of-englands-waters-delayed-by-six-years