Southern Water has been told to take some 400 actions to comply with Environment Agency permits following inspections during 2025-2026.
Poor maintenance and not knowing where their own discharge points should be were some of the issues found during the past year of intensive Environment Agency inspections of Southern Water.
A range of issues were discovered during 730 checks of Southern Water by EA officials in 2025-2026.
General maintenance was a significant issue, leading to widespread problems like poorly maintained screens and inadequate management of storm tanks.
However, the most common cause of noncompliance was around discharge sample and discharge points. In some cases, these were in inaccessible locations or operators did not know where these points were situated.
Inspections
Environment Agency inspectors have been checking sites intensively over the past two years. The goal of the checks is to prevent pollution by making sure water companies are operating as they should and within their permits. If inspections find they aren’t, then the water company is set strict actions to bring them back into compliance.
The team responsible for inspecting Southern Water assets, like sewage treatment works and storm tanks, increased its number of inspections by 110% from last year.
Southern Water has been told to take over 400 actions to comply with Environment Agency permits. Of the Southern Water sites investigated, 68% were found to be compliant with their permits.
A permit condition breach is when a water company fails to comply with the conditions set out in its environmental permit. This can happen for various reasons, such as equipment failure, effluent not meeting water quality standards, not treating required amount of wastewater flows or failing to manage assets.
”Cleaner water environment’
Dawn Theaker, water industry regulation manager for the Environment Agency, said: “Environment Agency inspectors are working very hard visiting hundreds of sites, each a key part of the drinking water and sewage systems everyone relies upon.
“These health checks find issues Southern Water needs to fix because if things go wrong, the environment suffers. We will keep returning until faults are fixed, and we’ll keep coming back to make sure everything stays that way.”
Helen Wakeham, Environment Agency’s Director for Water said: “In our role as regulators of the water industry, we are changing how we operate – with better data, our largest ever enforcement workforce and greater powers to do our job effectively.
“Inspections are a vital preventative measure, with our teams nationally issuing over 3,000 actions to water companies, including repairing sewage works and upgrading their infrastructure.
“Together, this will drive meaningful improvements in performance, hold persistent offenders to account and ultimately create a cleaner water environment.”
Minor breaches
Although many breaches in permit conditions were relatively minor, in terms of potential for pollution to occur, the EA says they are indicative of a water company’s approach to managing and maintaining their operations to protect the environment.
Even minor breaches must be remedied by water companies to ensure operations are compliant with permit conditions. More serious breaches, where there is found to be a higher potential for pollution, can be referred for further investigation which could lead to prosecution or other enforcement action.
More regulatory staff, increased monitoring of storm overflows, greater powers, and more inspections are part of a suite of measures to improve the water industry’s environmental performance. Investment in new infrastructure is also essential, and the Environment Agency and Natural England have already secured £22.1 billion water industry investment commitments for the next five years to upgrade and improve infrastructure to meet tighter environmental standards.
‘Pollution incidents fallen’
A Southern Water spokesperson said: “We continue to be open and transparent, and work closely with the Environment Agency and local stakeholders, including MPs, to meet the standards our customers and communities expect. That includes taking action whenever issues are identified.
“Pollution incidents have fallen by 30% since 2023, reflecting the real progress we’re making on environmental performance. We’re investing more than £8.5 billion between 2025 and 2030 to upgrade infrastructure for customers and to protect the environment.”
Southern Water says the vast majority of the 400 required actions relate to relatively minor breaches. They say they have reduced overall pollution by 30%, internal sewer flooding incidents fallen by 40%, drinking water quality compliance score up by 40% and last year reduced leakage by a record 18.5%.
