Fining firms for sewage spills will get ‘quicker and easier’, says government

Fining England's water companies for raw sewage spills will soon become quicker and easier, the Government has said.

The new proposals would introduce automatic fines of up to £20,000 for some minor offenses and reduce penalties for more serious ones.

In recent years, data obtained from in-house water monitoring equipment has shown how often wastewater spill regulations are broken. But the regulator, the Environmental Protection Agency, is by its own admission struggling to act.

“I want to give the Environment Agency the strength it needs to tackle all breaches of the rules,” Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds said as she announced the proposals.

“With new, automatic and tougher penalties for water companies, the consequences of violations will be swift, including not treating wastewater to required standards and service failures,” she said.

The plans will be put to a six-week public consultation starting on Wednesday.

England's water companies welcomed the proposals, with trade body Water UK saying: “It's right that water companies are held to account when things go wrong.”

For the most serious pollution crimes, the enforcement system remains the same. The EA must take water companies to court and prove to criminal standards that the crime was committed “beyond reasonable doubt.” If this prosecution results in a conviction, the company may have to pay a large fine, possibly running into millions of pounds.

The new proposals focus on smaller offenses that occur frequently and have gone largely unpunished in the past.

The plans introduce automatic financial penalties of up to £20,000 for breaches of the rules, such as failing to report a significant pollution incident within four hours, failing to properly report spills, or if emergency drains discharge sewage more than three times a year.

For some more serious offences, the government wants to make it easier for the EA to act.

He therefore proposes to reduce the burden of proof from “beyond a reasonable doubt” (the standard for criminal proceedings) to “on the balance of probabilities”, which applies in civil cases. The fines that the EA can impose without going to court can be increased to a maximum of half a million pounds.

Reducing the burden of proof for some offenses is already enshrined in law as part of the Water (Special Measures) Act, which received Royal Assent in February 2025. The purpose of the six-week consultation will be to determine which offenses should be included and the level of fines.

“Fines of £500,000 are pocket change for companies like Thames Water, worth billions of pounds,” says James Wallace, chief executive of campaign group River Action.

“Higher fines and urgent, sweeping reform are needed to stop negligent firms polluting our rivers and cheating their customers.”