Welsh Water fined £1.35m for widespread sewage permit breaches

DŴR CYMRU Welsh Water has been fined £1.35 million and ordered to pay more than £70,000 in costs after pleading guilty to more than 800 breaches of its environmental permits to discharge sewage.

The breaches, spanning hundreds of sites across Wales and Herefordshire, were identified through the company’s own self-monitoring data submitted to Natural Resources Wales (NRW) for the years 2020 and 2021.

Due to the sheer volume of non-compliances, the breaches were consolidated into 18 charges for the purpose of court proceedings. The company admitted guilt to 15 of these offences at Llandudno Magistrates’ Court on October 16, 2024, and accepted the remaining offences as Taken Into Consideration (TICs) in December.

Since 2010, water companies have been required to carry out self-monitoring of effluent discharges from sewage and water treatment works. NRW said it became concerned when the 2020 report from Welsh Water showed a sharp decline in the quality of monitoring data, revealing over 600 breaches at around 300 sites.

In court, Welsh Water blamed internal restructuring, IT scheduling failures, and the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic for the deterioration in compliance. Although the situation improved in 2021, further non-compliances were recorded.

NRW said contingency plans should have been in place to prevent such a large-scale failure, regardless of internal changes or external pressures. The regulator was unable to fully assess potential environmental harm due to missing data in 2020, but warned that the cumulative impact of hundreds of breaches could be significant.

Siân Williams, Head of Operations at NRW, said: “This case highlights serious inadequacies in Dŵr Cymru’s systems, which led to widespread breaches of environmental permits. While we understand the challenges presented by the pandemic, the company’s failings were avoidable had proper contingency planning been in place.”

She added that Welsh Water’s environmental performance has steadily declined in recent years. The company was downgraded from a four-star ‘industry leading’ rating in 2020 to two-star ‘requires improvement’ status in both 2022 and 2023.

In 2023, the utility recorded its worst-ever performance, with a rise in major pollution incidents and a fall in the number of incidents it self-reported.

The breaches prosecuted in this case are separate from those included in NRW’s annual Environmental Performance Assessment (EPA) but are part of wider concerns over Welsh Water’s compliance.

Ms Williams said: “The court’s decision follows a complex investigation, and I’d like to thank our regulatory teams for their diligence. We are increasing our compliance monitoring efforts across Wales and will not hesitate to take enforcement action when necessary.”

NRW says it has stepped up audits of Welsh Water’s self-monitoring activities as part of a wider crackdown on poor water quality across Wales.

A Welsh Water spokesperson said: “Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water has a strong record of compliance with our monitoring obligations prior to and after the period relevant to this matter.

“A combination of factors impacted our work during 2020-21 that included the COVID 19 pandemic. Despite this we met our monitoring requirements, which involve more than 18,000 tests per year, 98.95% of the time in 2020 and 99.45% in 2021.

“No sites were left unmonitored during this time, but the unique circumstances during 2020/21 caused significant challenges and disruption to our operations.

“There has been no identified environmental harm associated with this case and the monitoring failures represent a very small number of examples in a programme involving tens of thousands of submissions each year. Nonetheless, we recognise that our compliance fell short during 2020/21 and we entered a guilty plea at the earliest opportunity.

“Welsh Water will continue to work closely with our regulators to ensure that we deliver on our two main priorities, the best possible service to our customers and protecting the environment.”