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Southern Water has been fined more than £7m after illegally dumping sewage off the Kent coast between 2019 and 2021.
The company, described by the judge as having a “record of criminality” that was “an exceptionally serious aggravating factor”, pleaded guilty to 13 offences at Medway magistrates court last April over sewage discharges at Margate and Broadstairs wastewater pumping stations between 2019 and 2021.
Nine counts related to the incidents of untreated sewage dumped off the Kent coast, while three counts were over the failure to notify authorities of the discharges as soon as practicable and within 24 hours of a warning. This is a condition of the environmental permit.
A final conviction was for failing to have a standby pump at Margate’s station between 27 July 2019 and 4 October 2020, in breach of the permit.
The sentencing, at Canterbury crown court, took place on Thursday and Friday, with Mr Justice Johnson imposing a total fine of £7,127,083.
The company was fined £90m for nearly 7,000 incidents across Hampshire, Kent and Sussex in a case brought by the Environment Agency in 2021.
On Friday, Johnson said there were “overall serious failures”.
“The defendant knew the importance of maintaining resilience systems and equipment at these sites. And it knew what the consequences would be if the system or equipment or individual components failed.
“It was well aware of the potential for equipment to fail and for the essential need for robust maintenance and testing procedures. That is because of the dozens of previous occasions on which that had happened.”
He told the court: “The harm was not confined to a single event, but arose from a pattern of repeated incidents over several years.
“Taken together, the offending caused serious degradation of environmental quality, significant interference with public amenity, potential risk to public health and damage to the reputation of an important coastal community.”
The judge said Southern Water was a very large organisation with annual revenue over the last three years of between £800m and £1bn, and had 174 previous convictions, occurring every year from 1999 to 2016 and as recently as April this year.
“The defendant’s record of convictions shows a protracted history of noncompliance with its legal obligations, and a repeated pattern of inadequate staff training, insufficient investment in the infrastructure and a failure properly to maintain equipment. It also shows a failure to respond to warnings from the courts, including the resident judge of this court and the lord chief justice.
“This record of criminality, to the great detriment of the environment and the community in Kent, is an exceptionally serious aggravating factor,” he said.
On Thursday, the court heard details of the offences, including an intermittent flow of sewage on 20 July 2019 at the Margate site that lasted from about 2am to just before midnight. The Environment Agency was not notified until more than 32 hours after the first discharge.
Elsewhere, on 16 February 2021 at the Broadstairs wastewater station, the court heard that untreated sewage was dumped into the sea because of a computer control fault. It lasted nearly five hours and authorities were notified at the end of the discharge.
The prosecutor Andrew Marshall said the sewage that came out into the sea at a shorter distance from the shore at Broadstairs was “unscreened” – meaning solid waste remained in the sewage – and that there was a lot of sewage debris washed up on the coast.
Warnings were put in place on the beach between 17 and 19 February while company-contracted cleaners swept the beach for waste. Pictures shown in court showed the pollution on the beach and sanitary items in the sea.
The court also heard that sewage pollution discharges at Margate and Broadstairs stations between 16 and 17 June 2021 led to 11 bathing waters being closed for a week by Thanet council in a “high-profile pollution incident”. Pictures shown to the court showed waste in the water, closure notices and an empty beach with a red flag on display.
A Southern Water spokesperson said the company was “deeply sorry”, adding: “Pollution incidents like these are unacceptable, and we fully recognise the impact they can have on the environment and the communities we serve.
“These events took place more than five years ago – since then we’ve made significant changes. Under a new leadership team, backed by new shareholders, we’ve radically addressed our culture, governance and operations.”
The company said its responsibility now was to “continue delivering the improvements that will make a meaningful difference for our customers and the environment”.
Lindsay Faulkner, the environment manager for the Environment Agency in Kent, said: “Southern Water allowed this repeated pollution to happen. Stronger oversight by the company is needed, and plain to see from their track record. These preventable incidents harmed the environment and local communities, but like so much pollution caused by water companies, they were avoidable and should never have happened.
“The Environment Agency demands much more from Southern Water. Our inspections of sewage treatment sites, including pumping stations at fault in this case, will continue. We are holding them to account.”
