An ad campaign by Anglian Water extolling how it cleans water by creating wildlife-friendly wetlands has been banned for not telling consumers about its history of releasing sewage into the environment.
The ban on the TV and video-on-demand ad, which claims “everything we do today is for tomorrow”, comes less than a month after water companies in England apologised for repeated sewage spills and pledged to invest £10bn this decade in an attempt to quell public anger over pollution in seas and rivers.
The Advertising Standards Authority received nine complaints that the ads were misleading because they omitted “significant information” on “Anglian Water’s history of releasing sewage into the environment”, for which it had been fined.
Last month, Anglian Water pleaded guilty to allowing millions of litres of untreated sewage to overflow from a water recycling centre in Essex. It was fined £2.65m, the largest ever penalty imposed for environmental offences in the east of England region.
The ASA pointed out that in 2021, the most recent year data was available, Anglian Water had received an overall environmental performance assessment (EPA) of two stars, out of a maximum of four, meaning that the company “requires improvement”.
Anglian Water said it was investing in “environmental protection and improvement for the long term” and that elements of the wider campaign also included addressing criticism aimed at the company and the industry “regarding perceptions of environmental performance”.
The company said it often “exceeded the expectations” of regulators such as the Environment Agency and Ofwat and did not believe “any significant information had been omitted from the campaign”.
However, Environment Agency figures earlier this year showed there were a total of 301,091 sewage spills in 2022, an average of 824 a day.
Anglian Water told the ASA that it did not actively dump sewage into rivers and seas.
“We care deeply about helping look after our region and apologise that we unintentionally misled customers with this advertisement,” the water company said.
“We fully accept the ruling and took prompt action to remove the advert in line with the Advertising Standard Authority’s guidance.”
The ASA said: “We accepted that Anglian Water were carrying out a number of activities that could have a positive impact on the environment.
“However, because they also carried out activities that caused harm to the environment, which contradicted the overall impression of the ad, we considered that was material information which should have been made clear in the ads. We concluded that the ads omitted material information and were therefore misleading.”
