Legal challenge from WildFish to be heard in the High Court

“We have one simple ask of the Government: enforce the existing law to stop water companies dumping raw sewage into our rivers”. 

On 4 July, the legal challenge brought by WildFish, which seeks to have the Government’s sewage plan rejected as unlawful and re-written, will be heard in the High Court.

WildFish wants the Government to: 

1. Enforce the law (in existence since 1994) and stop water companies from dumping raw sewage in rivers. 

2. Get rid of the current plan for sewage pollution (known as the Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan) which effectively allows water companies to continue to break the law for a further 27 years until 2050 and develop a plan that is in line with the existing law. 

3. Ensure water companies foot the bill for any increased sewage capacity required by the law, not their customers. 

Since 1994, the law in England and Wales has required privatised water companies to prevent the discharge of untreated sewage into rivers, unless there is a risk of sewer flooding due to exceptional rainfall. The law also imposes a duty (not just a power) on the Secretary of State and OFWAT to enforce that requirement. 

In reality, what the water companies, the Secretary of State and OFWAT have jointly delivered has fallen far short of the legal requirements.

Almost all of the huge number of raw sewage discharges that we see today – and are now regularly reported – are contrary to the existing law. Despite this: 

• Water companies consistently (at every periodic review period and as the law requires them to do) reassure OFWAT that they have sufficient funds and can comply with all their regulatory requirements. OFWAT has always accepted those assurances.
• Most permits issued by the Environment Agency allow raw sewage to be discharged if there is any rainfall or snowmelt rather than only in exceptional weather. Consequently, this ‘permit loophole’ has been exploited to the fullest possible extent, with the Government’s and OFWAT’s active approval. 
• The Secretary of State and OFWAT have jointly avoided enforcing the ‘exceptional rainfall’ law, turning a deliberately blind eye to water companies’ ‘sweating their assets’ and discharging raw sewage to the rivers, when the law says they should not.

Nick Measham, chief executive at WildFish, said: “it is time for the Government to end its ‘smoke and mirrors’ approach to environmental regulation once and for all and make the water companies do what they have promised to do, and have been required to do by law, for nearly 30 years.

This must be at their own expense. Our wild fish, our rivers and all of us have had enough.

“If we win this case, it will fall to the Secretary of State, OFWAT and the Environment Agency jointly to ensure the water companies now deliver what the law has required them to do for years”. 

The Royal Courts of Justice daily cause list can be found here.