Minister: Water Bosses Responsible for Repeated Sewage Dumping to Face Criminal Charges, Bonus Ban

Environment secretary Steve Reed arrives at BBC Broadcasting House in London, to appear on the BBC One current affairs programme, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Picture date: Sunday July 28, 2024. James Manning/PA Wire

Water bosses who are responsible for repeated illegal sewage dumping will lose their bonuses and face criminal charges, the environment secretary has said.

Steve Reed said he’s introducing new laws to Parliament that will give the regulators “more teeth.”

“Water bosses responsible for repeated illegal sewage dumping will face criminal charges, and I'll ban the payment of their multi-million-pound bonuses until they clean up their toxic filth,” the minister wrote in an article published in the Mail Online.

Mr. Reed said it was “more profitable to let the pollution flow rather than fix the broken pipes, and regulation was too weak to stop them,” and vowed it “will never happen again” under Labour.

Appearing on the BBC’s “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg” programme, Mr. Reed couldn’t specify a threshold of sewage dumping for criminal charges would be triggered.

“What I want to do is clean up our water. We’ll do it by making the water bosses face criminal charges if they are responsible for persistent, severe levels of illegal sewage dumping,” he said.

“We will ban the payment of their multimillion-pound bonuses while they’re overseeing that kind of failure.

“We will ring-fence customers’ money that is earmarked for spending on investing in the sewer system. So, if it’s not spent on that, it will be refunded to customers in a discount on their bills.”

The minister also said there’s no plan to temporarily nationalise Thames Water.

“Thames Water remains financially viable. They are seeking to raise the funds that they need moving forward and we need to give them the space to get on and do that,” he said, adding there’s currently “no threat to water supply” and “no need to have undue concerns.”

Thames Water, the UK’s largest water company that services 16 million customers across London and the Thames Valley, is one of the companies that were found to have pumped raw sewage into waterways.

It’s also more than £15 billion in debt, saying earlier this month that it only had enough money to continue operating until May 2025.

On July 11, Regulator Ofwat put the company into special measures and rejected its request to increase consumers’ water bills by 44 percent over the next five years.

On the same day, the environment secretary announced an initial package of reforms including ring-fencing funding vital infrastructure investment, giving consumers power to summon board members to new customer panels, and plans to more than double the compensation for customers “when key standards are not met.”

The government also said companies had agreed to change their governing rules to “make the interests of customers and the environment a primary objective.”

Victoria Friedman contributed to this report.